Wine guides for the ultra curious, Approach Guides take an in-depth look at a wine region’s grapes, appellations and vintages to help you discover wines that meet your preferences.
With nearly 400 grape varieties — representing over one-quarter of the world’s 1400 that produce wine in commercial quantities — Italy offers something new and engaging for even the most passionate wine drinker. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as these grapes reveal distinctive styles depending on where they are grown. This guidebook makes sense of this complex landscape, allowing you to find your favorites and appreciate them in an even deeper way.
What’s in this guidebook
- A region-by-region review. This Approach Guide provides a high-level review of each of Italy’s regions, its red and white grape varieties, the denominations in which these grapes reach their highest expressions and the flavors wines typically exhibit. A short list of leading wine producers is also provided.
- Vintage ratings. We offer a straightforward vintage ratings table that lays out the best and most challenging years for wine production in Italy.
- Recommendations. To help in your selection process, we have marked our favorite regions, grape varieties and denominations with asterisks (*) — look for this indication as a sign of quality, consistency and good value.
- A distinctive approach. This guidebook’s approach is unique: rather than tell you what specific bottle of wine to order by providing individual bottle reviews, it gives you the information you require to make informed wine choices on any list.
- Information the way you like it. As with all of our guides, this book is optimized for intuitive, quick navigation; information is organized into bullet points to make absorption easy; trademark features of grapes and denominations are front and center.
