Wines of Southern Italy

Welcome back to those of you who enjoyed our Introduction to Italy and its Wines on this blog some months back. As we jump back into our Wednesday’s weekly wine appointments, I look forward to sharing my love of Italian wines with you as we explore Italy from top to toe. So in the weeks to come, don’t forget to stop by each Wednesday to learn all about the Wines of Southern Italy!

Shall we begin?

Italy is the most diverse wine-growing region in the world. Each region not only has its own food variations, but also produces its own wine to suit. There are 900,000 vineyards registered in Italy – and nobody knows quite how many wines. That means there is a vineyard for every seven people!

This makes it difficult to give any definitive account of wine regions here, and indeed there are very few people who could claim to have a full knowledge of Italian wine. However, for the beginning enthusiast and those epicureans seeking some guidance in the vast expanse of the wine of Il Bel Paese, the task is often tackled by approaching the peninsula in sections. I will guide you through the southern wine territories first and, gradually working our way up the boot, we will cover Italian wines region-by-region – glass in hand.

This week we will be introducing italyMONDO! Blog readers and followers to the delightful wines of the south. We will be discovering wines hailing from the islands of Sicily and Sardegna, the continental regions of Calabria, Basilicata, Puglia in the former Magna Græcia, and then moving up to the plentiful vineyards of Campania before traveling to Molise, Abruzzo and Lazio. Come along as we take a wine-tasting tour of southern Italy’s wine country.

While they’’re not superstars like their Tuscan, Friuliani or Piemontese cousins, the wines of Italy’s southern regions are equally bold, full-bodied, and tremendously satisfying.

Southern Italy has been producing wine for over 4,000 years. Arabs and Phoenicians planted what may have been the first “foreign” vines in the southern part of the peninsula. Later, Greeks—and the Romans in their turn—recognized the potential of the slopes that gave them Falernum, Caecubum, Mamertinum and other heady wines that were praised by poets like Horace and Virgil. Many more outsiders left their marks on these Mediterranean shores, foremost the Spaniards, who dominated the southern portion of the peninsula until the Risorgimento in the nineteenth century and brought their own grapes into Sardegna, Sicily and other places centuries after the first settlers had begun cultivating the vine.

The misconception that the Mezzogiorno has a universally torrid climate overlooks the fact that much of the territory is temperate with parts that are positively chilly. Conditions depend on altitude and proximity to the Tyrrhenian, Ionian or Adriatic seas and their winds. Fine wines are made in warm places – the slopes of volcanoes, sunbathed islands, Puglia’s spectacular Salento peninsula, Sicily’s western coast and Sardegna’s Campidano plains. But many wines of scope come from higher, cooler places, like the hills around Avellino in Campania, Basilicata’s Vulture area, Sicily’s central highlands, Puglia’s interior plateau and even the below the snowcapped mountains of the Abruzzo and Molise. While they’re not superstars like their Tuscan, Friuliani or Piemontese cousins, the wines of Italy’s southern regions are equally bold, full-bodied, and tremendously satisfying.

We will begin our discovery of southern Italian wines next Wednesday by following the ancient Greeks’ council, who took huge pleasure in the wines of the magical island of Sicily.

Until next week… salute!

Would you like to taste wine from the same vines that your ancestors in southern Italian once used – and even have the chance to meet living relatives in the process? Contact us and find out how italyMONDO! can help you research your Italian family tree or create a vacation of a lifetime for you and your family – wine tours and all!

Photo Courtesy of “rdesai” at Flickr