welcome to the crash course in Italian wine regions there's a lot of people out there that want to know what's the big deal about the wine regions of Italy why they're important and how to get to know them in the quickest and easiest way possible if you want to master Italian wines understanding Italian wine regions is your very first step so over the next 20 videos I'm gonna be giving you short little five minute craft courses in each Italian wine region so you can absorb them in small batches there's only one thing I'll ask you
before you begin this course the key to truly understanding Italian wine regions is you've got to drink a lot of wine so can you promise me you'll drink lots of wine benissimo let's get started so I'm Tony margiana I'm a wine importer and author of this book called hidden gems of Italy my life's mission is to find and support world-class art even a wines handcrafted in small batches from Italy many of which have been overlooked and undervalued my family is from a small village in the malays a region of southern Italy and I've been traveling
to Italy for over 20 years immersing myself in Italian food wine and culture so first of all you're looking at a regional map of Italy notice how the mainland shaped like a tall boot it has the main body of the boot it has a high heel on the back and a long toe on the front well mainland Italy is a peninsula meaning there are three bodies of water surrounding Italy you've got the Turanian sea on the western part you have the Adriatic Sea on the eastern part and then between the toe and the heel you'll
find a little sea called the Ionian Sea so Italy's broken down into these 20 regions you can think of them as 20 States but we call them regions two of the regions happen to be very large islands that are not connected to the mainland Sicily and Sardinia and there are dozens and dozens of little tiny islands all around Italy that are part of one of those regions so Italy while it's surrounded by three different seas it's actually located in the center of a much much larger sea and I know you've heard of it the Mediterranean
it's this part of the world where we've seen the best wines in the world coming from for thousands of years and Italy is at the heart of it all so four reasons why a timeline is complicated one being yes there are 20 regions that have their own unique wines it's a lot then to complicate it further there are thousands of native grape varietals grown throughout those regions and then inside every region there are what we call subs a wine zones sub regions or Appalachians all mean the same thing and then finally the Italian language which
makes it very complicated I mean you go into a wine shop and you're looking at a hundred different Italian wines they're all written in Italian you have no idea what they taste like or where they're from exactly so the Greeks called Italy the land of wine thousands of years ago because wine grapes could be cultivated easily on the peninsula and the islands and lots of great wines could be made from them and that's still true today the reason why it's so complicated to learn is because Italy has literally thousands of distinct wines very different from
one to the next it's not as easy as just learning the most popular wines of the day like Cabernet Merlot Pinot Noir there is way more variety in wines in Italy than any other country in the world so this abundance of variety is really a gift from the wine gods because there's just so much deliciousness out there to explore but it's also a challenge you know where do you begin right so the first step in understanding Italian wines is to look at this regional map and memorize all 20 of these reasons so if you look
at the description that I've left below this video you'll see a list of all these 20 regions but I'm gonna I'm gonna read them out to you right now starting up in the northwest we have Piermont a valid all-star lombardia alto adige friuli-venezia giulia Veneto Emilia Romagna Liguria Toscana marque Umbria Lazio Abruzzo Molise a companion huyyah Basilicata Calabria cecilia Sardinia so that's the only 20 words you need to memorize it's a lot but it's just 20 I think it's manageable I'm sure you could probably read off 20 states in the u.s. if you had to
do it yeah when it comes to wine each region makes their own distinct wines and they do that by cultivating their own native grapes so really when you think about it Italy has their own local wines but they're broken down by region so you know how do we organize all of these wines in our minds so I've laid this out this is really the the best way to think about Italian wines you first think about what region is the wine coming from then you think of what is the wine made of and that's the native
grapes and then the third thing you need to know is where within the region was it made these are the three things and I'd argue that the region and the native grapes are far more important but the sub region is also truth be told very very important so five steps to mastering Italian wine regions this is this is what you're gonna do you memorize the twenty regions then you're just going to pick a region you decide then you memorize the native grapes that the most important native grapes that are found in that region start drinking
wine at that point basically you once you have those list of native grape varietals just start buying wines with those grape varietals written on the labels and then step 5 after you've sort of exhausted yourself a little bit with one of the regions you pick another region then you rinse and repeat it'll keep you busy for quite a while believe me so native grapes probably after learning the region's knowing which which grapes are used in those regions to make wine is probably the most important thing so what are native Italian grapes well these are distinct
grapes that have been growing in their native soil of origin for at least a thousand years and many of them have been growing in their native origin on the Italian peninsula for three thousand years why are they important well each grape varietal when it turns into wine it has a unique and distinct character unique aromas flavours and textures make it different from one to the other there are thousands this is an estimate there are thousands of different grape varietals found on the peninsula and many of them are located just in their region and then there
are other grape varietals that you can find all over the peninsula which is very interesting so um you know I don't want to discourage you you're not gonna be able to learn them all that's the truth you're not able to learn all these native grapes and the truth is I won't be able to learn them all either but it's fun trying the second most important thing that you need to know about Italian wine regions is that after the grape varietal the second most important thing that influences the flavor the texture aroma and behavior of the
wine is the vineyard location so vineyards are located inside what we call sub regions or Appalachians they're designed to place borders around where certain wines can be made so because the location the vineyard location is so influential on the taste making trying to make the same type of wine outside of that designated sub region that wine won't express the same character and therefore would lack the authenticity each region has its own sub regions some are more important than others but just know that the sub region has a big influence on how the wine will taste
and I just want to give you an example real quick here of a sub region appellation map this is of the region of Puglia and as you can see there are dozens of Appalachians or sub regions whichever word you choose to describe them and it can be overwhelming to memorize these different Appalachians so in the next 20 videos I'm going to share with you just a few Appalachians that you should explore only the most obsessed Italian wine aficionado should be memorizing all these there's no need for you to memorize all these Appalachians it can be
very very overwhelming so I'm going to give you just what I think are the most important ones in each crash course video honestly you you'll get way more out of understanding Italian wines like knowing which grape you're drinking and which region it comes from if you can handle that you're going to be the light years ahead of anyone else when it comes to a time once so I'm gonna just show you this graph one more time you know this basically shows you what you need to think about when you're trying to master the wine regions
of Italy over the next 20 videos I'll break down for you the most important grape varietals you should know for each region and I'll recommend which sub regions you should taste within each region and I'll recommend one white wine and one red wine for each region so that you can begin your explorations um I'm even going to throw in a few stories about each region because I think that every region in Italy has its own fascinating story and I'd argue that story is found in every good bottle of wine so these next series of videos
will not only be informative about wine but also culturally interesting about Italian history so it makes you subscribe to gladiator wine TV so you don't miss out on the new videos about artisanal wine and more and remember great wines are not made in great numbers
