Salu2food(Home) Wine Regions Old World Italy
SOUTHERN ITALY
Southern Italy and the Islands
Hot and largely hilly, with volcanic soils, southern Italy is an ancientand prolific wine-growing area While overproduction continues to be a problem,there are an increasing number of well-made wines.
JUTTING OUT INTO THE BLUE WATERS of the Mediterranean, the vineyards ofsouthern Italy receive very little natural moisture and bake rather thanbask In unrelenting sunshine. This factor provides for deep colored wineswith strong flavors and high alcoholic levels. These heavy wines do notsuit modem tastes and even though southern Italy continues to produce aglut of this almost unsaleable wine, the region is subtly changing course.Its small but growing volume of cleaner, finer, more expressive wines mayenable it to establish an identity capable of thriving in ever more sophisticatedworld wine markets. The biggest obstacle to achieving this is the povertywhich has for so long blighted southern Italy
APULIA (PUGLIA)
Apulia's exceptionally fertile plains make it one of Italy's largest wine-producingregions, but until the 1970s most of its wines were
seen fit only for blending or for making Vermouth. Because of this, mostApulian producers decided to try to rid themselves of this lowly reputation,bringing about a radical transformation of their industry A great numberof very ordinary wines are still produced but various changes have greatlyimproved the situation. Irrigation schemes, the introduction of lower-yielding,higher-quality grape
varieties (including many classic French ones) and a move away from thesingle-bush cultivation, known as alberello, to modem wire-trained systems,have led to both new wines gaining favor and some traditional ones showingrenewed promise. Now the two most important grape varieties are the Primitivo,which has been identified as the Zinfandel of California and is the earliestripening grape grown in Italy and the Uva di Troia, which has no connectionwith the town of Troia in Apulia's northern province of Foggia, but refersto ancient Troy from where the grape originates. It was brought to the regionby the first Greeks to settle in the Taranto area.
CAMPANIA
Campania Felix, as the Romans called it, is well-known for "LacrymaChristi", a wine that today is not bad enough to bring a tear to theeye of Christ, but which is certainly not a fine wine. Little else producedhere is of interest.
BASILICATA
Basilicata is a dramatic and wild region dominated by the extinct volcanoMount Vulture. Manufacturing industry is scarce here, accounting for lessthan one per cent of the regions output, and the mountainous terrain makesmechanized agriculture extremely difficult. Lacking investment finance andwith two in every three inhabitants unemployed, Basilicata has not had themeans nor the incentive to modernize its wine industry. Consequently withthe exception of the first class, if idiosyncratic, Aglianico del VultureDOC by Fratelli d'Angelo, there is very little here of interest.
CALABRIA
The decline in Calabria's viticultural output since the 1960s has been forthe better in terms of quality. Since then the most unsuitable land hasbeen abandoned, and the eight current DOCs, located in hilly and mountainousterrain, may eventually prove to be a source of quality wine. At the moment,however, improvement in wine technology is slow and, with the exceptionof Umberto Ceratti's succulent Greco di Bianco, a world-class dessert winethat is a relic of the past, this region also has little in the way of interestingwine.
SICILY (SICILIA)
Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean and, in terms of quantityone of Italy's most important wine regions, annually producing a quantity,roughly equal to Veneto or Emilia Romagna. Many of the island's wines areconsumed locally although the branded wine "Corvo" has a fairlyhigh export profile. Sicily's once popular classic wine, Marsala, now findsitself OUt of favor with modem tastes, although there is a determined effortto reestablish it by dropping the flavor red versions and concentratingon lighter vergine style.
SARDINIA (SARDEGNA)
Whilst virtually all styles of wine are still produced in Sardinia, itswine industry has undergone a radical modernization since the late-1970s.Its wines are now vinified in stainless steel at cool temperatures and,as a result, the majority of Sardinia's wines are fresh and dean, with goodfruity flavors. Although it produces no "fine" wine, in the classicsense, the wines are generally well made and easy to enjoy