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On the northwestern border shared with France and Switzerland, this Alpine region doesn’t produce much wine. While there are seemingly endless granular idiosyncrasies of Italian wine, this broad overview of the country’s 20 regions will get you started, ordered from north to south. Romantic landscapes don’t hurt Italy’s brand, either. Vigneto: Vineyard Italy’s 20 regions Italian Wine RegionsĪmericans love Italian wines for its diversity of styles, protection of indigenous varieties, food-friendliness and, quite often, great value. Sign up Privacy PolicyĬlassico: Denotes wines from a zone within a region (i.e., Chianti Classico) considered the original area of production.Īzienda Agricola: A farm or estate that produces its own grapes for the production of its wines.Īnnata or Vendemmia: A specific harvest or vintage. Thank You! We've received your email address, and soon you will start getting exclusive offers and news from Wine Enthusiast. Introduced in 1992, this classification allows winemakers to use grapes and craft styles not allowed under DOC and DOCG regulations. IGT: An abbreviation for Indicazione Geografica Tipica. There are 334 DOCs in Italy, with the most recent additions approved in mid-2017. Rules govern production and style but aren’t as stringent as those for DOCGs. There are 74 DOCGs in Italy, with the latest addition in 2011.ĭOC: An abbreviation for Denominazione di Origine Controllata. They include where the grapes can be grown, what varieties are allowed and how wines can be aged.
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Strict rules govern all aspects of production. It’s the top classification for Italian wines. A few key terms can help you understand the implications of the language on your bottle.ĭOCG: An abbreviation for Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita.
#Wine maps of italy by regions how to#
How to Read an Italian Wine LabelĮuropean labels can be difficult to read, especially those from Italy. Whether you’ve just begun to explore wine or are an expert who seeks to brush up on the basics, bookmark this page as a quick reference guide. Currently we have a long list of new maps to create, and we’d love to hear your thoughts.Here’s your ultimate primer on Italian wine. Have some quality feedback for us? Like all of our content on Wine Folly, we welcome your feedback and ideas for improvement. Surprisingly, if you have the tools, NASA (as a government resource) provides exceptional elevation models of the Earth’s surface for free. To do this, we learned about NASA’s long term digital elevation models of the earth.
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Naturally, because elevation is one of the most important indicators of wine quality, the very first data type we wanted to append in the maps was a simply way to visualize a regions topography.
#Wine maps of italy by regions update#
We hope to continually update this information over the long term with data as the wine world evolves. This added layer of detail opens up a way to find new wine that other wine maps do not have. When we created our first set of maps, we learned the importance of listing the top wines of each region. Thematic maps are very powerful when built with relevant contextual information. Since GIS is a digital standard in which all maps (from Google to NASA), the maps have the ability to overlay other geospatial information that is useful to a wine enthusiast. The maps are created with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) which can be used to store, manage and present all types of spatial or geographic data. After creating our last set of maps using less accurate tools, we realized it was time to start inputting out map data into a more dynamic system.
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