Sommelier Breaks Down Every Italian Wine

There are 20 different Italian wine regions

and over 500 different styles,

which definitely can make shopping

for Italian wines confusing, but it doesn't have to be.

Hey, I'm sommelier André Hueston Mack,

and today, I'll tell you what you need to know

about Italian wines in every region

and in your wine shop.

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Italian wines definitely have a reputation,

and I would say that it's more about its diversity,

different regions, different climates,

and they're somewhat affordable.

The information that you can learn today, you can take that

to your wine store, that can help you narrow down

the selection of wines that you like or want to try.

I'm gonna take you on a tour of some key regions

and taste some great wines

that I think you should be aware of.

[dramatic whooshing]

So first up is the Piedmont region of Italy.

So what makes Piedmont Region great

is its continental climate.

They have warm days, cool nights,

that really helps in the growing of the grapes.

If you can get high enough heat during the day

so the grapes can ripen,

and cool nights so they can retain some type of acidity,

that puts you in the best place for growing fruit.

So this is Paolo Scavino, this is the Barbera d'Alba 2022,

and this is 20 dollars.

If we kind of, like, decode, or look at the label here,

so you have Paolo Scavino,

so you have the name of the producer,

and then, you have Barbera...

[indistinct]

The grape, in the town of Alba.

Underneath the name you'll see the DOC,

when you see DOC or DOCG on the bottle,

that's saying that that is a protected area

that has been designated by the government.

The reputation of this wine is...

This is everyday drinking wine,

this is what Italians drink on a everyday basis.

The reason why Barbera has this great reputation

of being everyday luxury is that it's widely planted,

it grows pretty easily,

there's not a lot of aging requirements,

so this is, you know, economically, you know,

a really great wine that can be produced fairly easy.

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This kind of smells like a plum pie.

No...

Anybody ever have a plum pie? [laughs]

I'm just making up [beep].

Let me just call it raspberry, raspberry and plum pie.

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Now, this is pretty easy drinking.

It's not overwhelmingly complex by any means,

you know, this has some acidity to it,

and it's not overly jammy or fruity.

You accentuate acidity on the sides of your tongue,

if the sides of your tongue start to tingle,

that means the wine is high in acid,

if you start to salivate,

that means the wine is high in acid,

but also think of acidity as an amplifier,

but this is great, this...

You know, this screams food,

like, it has an acid level I think

that makes me wanna salivate and eat,

and I think this is a great starting point

for Italian wines, I think it has

a little bit more fruit than most,

you know, this could be, you know, your entry,

your training wheels into Italian wine,

especially if you started drinking New World wines.

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So we're standing in the region of Piedmont,

and this is from Paolo Conterno,

this is Barolo, 56 dollars.

So Barolo is called the king of Italian wines,

the don dada, you know what I mean?

Like, if not the greatest wine, one of their greatest ones,

and they have, like, crazy age requirements,

like, this bottle of wine

needs to be aged at least 38 months,

at least 18 months in oak, in a barrel,

before it can ever go into a bottle,

and because of its limited production,

these make these wines wildly expensive and rare.

By aging a wine, the wine can become a lot more complex

and more integrated, a freshly new bottle of wine,

it tends to be more on the fruity side, on the oak-y side,

over time, that wine that is astringent and oak-y

and high in alcohol will all start to come into balance.

All right, yeah, so we're gonna hop in here.

So here, it's a little bit more floral, so I...

You know, here I'm getting more rose petals, and I'm...

I smell a little bit of asphalt.

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This wine is super tannic.

The whole inside of my mouth is dry, my gums are dry,

and that's due to the nature of the wine.

Generally, you know, Nebbiolo is a very tannic grape,

so you're getting in a lot of that.

If it...

There's fruit, I would say more, like, dried cranberry,

maybe with a hint of strawberry.

That's pretty beautiful,

there's nothing really like that in the wine world,

something very special about Barolo,

and you can see why it's the king of Italian wines.

So still in Piedmont, here we have

the La Spinetta Moscato d'Asti, and this is 22 dollars.

Moscato is a grape, d'Asti is the region.

Moscato d'Asti is frizzante. Frizzante means sparkling.

And when people ask me about sweet wine,

this is the first place that I direct them to.

Why do we say a wine is dry or off-dry?

There's a pendulum that works

between sweetness and alcohol level.

If you allow wine to ferment completely dry,

the wine will have no sugar

and it will be what we call a dry wine.

If you ferment some of the wine

and stop the fermentation at any particular point

before it's dry, then you'll have

a level of sweetness in it.

We'll go ahead and give this an open here.

[wine pouring]

Just...

I mean, just peaches, very floral,

almost kind of has, like, a muscat gummy...

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Peaches, apricots, plum on the palate.

There is some sweetness to the wine,

but it's not cloyingly sweet or syrupy.

It finishes elegantly, there's some acidity to it,

and then, it has these, like, nice little bubbles,

the frizzante that kind of dances on your tongue.

So we would serve this with dessert,

you want the wine to be less sweet than the dessert,

if the wine is sweeter than the dessert,

then you really don't really get to taste the dessert,

you just normally taste the wine,

and so, this frames the dessert that you're having,

so any type of, like, fruit tart with a glaze

or anything, like, on that, this was always my go-to.

So we're moving on to our next region,

this is from Trentino-Alto Adige.

So this is in the northern part of Italy,

a cooler climate, cold region.

Italy has a diversity of climates.

In the northern part of Italy, you can ski there.

So this is from J. Hofstätter,

and this is Pinot Grigio, and this is 22 dollars.

[cash register ringing]

When you think about...

From this particular region, from the Alto Adige,

Pinot Grigio, and these kind of really set the standards

of what Pinot Grigio is.

It is cooler-climate Pinot Grigio with high acid

that has some nuance to it.

I get kind of, like, white flowers, straw.

I don't wanna say that it smells sweet to me,

but it does smell like a little bit of powdered sugar,

I don't think that it's sweet,

it's gonna be sweet or anything like that,

but I do get a little bit of that smell.

I think I'm just traumatized,

you know, I used to make the cotton candy

at Chuck E. Cheese when I was 17.

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It's got some acid to it,

but it's not ripping hard acid and no middle palate,

like, this wine has weight to it.

Weight is how a wine sits on your palate, right?

How it coats your tongue, so think about...

You know, we always use the example of milk, right?

So if we use 2% milk, how that tastes in your mouth,

roll that around in your mouth,

and then, you pour heavy cream into your mouth, right?

Alcohol can translate into weight

and be perceived as weight on the palate.

If you like Pinot Grigio,

I think you should try other Pinot Grigios

from different regions.

Americans who like the U.S. Pinot Grigio would like this

because I think it's some comparison in the weight,

it has a very similar style in that way.

[dramatic whooshing]

So now we're moving on to Tuscany, so we think about...

It's very picturesque, lots of rolling hills,

just a really kind of beautiful sprawling landscape there.

So this is Chianti, this is from Tenuta Le Calcinaie,

and this is Chianti Colli Senesi, and this is 24 dollars.

You know, a little bit of history here,

a lot of this, you know,

goes back to, I believe, World War II,

GI spent a lot of time in Italy

enjoying the cuisine and the wine,

a lot of that was transferred back,

so you started to see a lot

of checker red tablecloth restaurants introduce Chianti,

and this wine is 100% Sangiovese.

So Sangiovese, very astringent botanic grape.

I always think about spaghetti westerns,

and then, I think about it being dusty,

but it really leads with that kind of quality

and less fruit.

And, you know, we talked about the governing body in Italy,

it's called the DOC,

but then, also, there's another level,

somewhat of a upgrade, the DOCG,

another level of distinction

when we're talking about Italian wines.

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Raspberries.

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A little bit of blackberry.

A little bit of, like, leather.

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And there's that dusty thing that I talk about,

but it finishes kind of rough, and not in a bad way

and in a very much Chianti way to me

where it's a different type of beast in that way.

It's got a little oomph to it,

it's got some body to it and some structure to it

that normally you wouldn't see

in a traditional Chianti,

but it does have that framework

and very much Chianti across the board.

All right, so moving on to Brunello di Montalcino

located in the region of Tuscany,

this is Ciacci Piccolomini, this is Brunello di Montalcino,

and this comes in at 60 dollars.

And this is considered one of Italy's rarest wines,

it is the first wine to achieve DOCG status.

The grape, they call it Brunello,

but actually, to be honest with you,

it's a variation of Sangiovese.

It's bigger and it has a thicker skin,

and because it takes longer to ripen,

it's gonna impart a lot more tanning

'cause it's got more skin-to-grape ratio,

and because of that skin, it makes one of the biggest

and brooding-style Italian wines.

I remember I was always taught, you know,

Brunello di Montalcino was, you know, Italian steak wine,

so it's basically Chianti on steroids.

[wine pouring]

This is one of my favorite wines.

It smells somewhat savory, it reminds me a lot of iodine,

like, it kind of has, like, that iodine, savory, rosemary.

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There's dried leather, there's just a hint of cinnamon,

there is a little bit of cedar,

and a little bit of currant and blackberry.

Man, that's so good,

one of my favorite wines to drink.

It almost feels like graduating,

it's just on another level.

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All right, so we're still in Tuscany,

and this is called Tuscany IGT.

This is Le Difese, and this is 50 dollars.

Tuscana IGT, it's a category that's made up of

what we like to call Super Tuscans.

They are probably some of the most sought after

Italian wines, commanding crazy expensive prices.

Super Tuscans generally are indigenous grapes

from the region, so think about Sangiovese,

and they're blended with more European noble grapes,

so thinking about Cabernet or Merlot.

The DOC and the DOCG,

they have these really kinda tight guidelines

on what these wines can be called.

IGT has less requirements, it's less strict,

you know, you think it would just be bottom-feeders,

it's kinda quite opposite.

Super Tuscans are what

kind of brought to prominence a lot of these wines,

Super Tuscans can man

some of the highest prices in the world.

So yeah, this is lots of, like, red currant, black currant,

there's, like, a leather kind of element to it,

just thinking about wood.

So fruit is confirmed on the palate,

but there's a level of acidity to it

that you normally wouldn't get in Cabernet, right?

And that's due to the Sangiovese,

and so, it's kind of a mix of these two worlds

that's always been fun and prevalent,

a lot of these wines are definitely made

on the more modern side and less traditional,

which a lot of these people were innovatives

and kind of pushing the envelope forward.

[dramatic whooshing]

All right, so now, we're moving on to Emilia-Romagna,

I always talk about,

If it grows together, it goes together,

this is kind of the belly of Italy

where you think about some of its most famous foods,

Prosciutto di Parma, mortadella,

a lot of those things you can think about

are from this particular area.

This is Becco Rosso from Fiorini, and this is Lambrusco.

Lambrusco is sparkling wine from this particular region,

which is interesting because most of it

is red sparkling wine, they're made the same way

that sparkling white wines are made,

but basically, you're making a still wine first,

and then, you introduce the yeast

and that sparks the secondary fermentation,

so the still wine that you're making here

is just red instead of white,

so there's different things

on the label that you can look for,

secco is the biggest thing if you're looking for dry,

and dolce for it being sweet,

so you wanna look for those two things on the label

if there's nobody around to ask in the store.

All right, so we're gonna keep our thumb on,

put a little twine down, six half-turns...

[indistinct]

Good to go.

I kinda...

In the same way that, like, you would loosen a tie,

you put your finger in the rung

but still keeping your thumb on there,

then you wanna switch...

Oh, my god, this is coming out really...

By itself, there it is, sniper.

So look at it, that's really red, and it's really fizzy,

and so, to me, these wines are always just, like, fun

just from the color, that's a rare thing,

you normally don't see that,

but that whole process right there just gets me so excited.

And so, this is, like...

It has, like, a bubblegum smell, but it's savory.

It smells like thyme.

So...

But it's herbaceous bubblegum,

is kinda what it smells like to me.

So this is, like, unlike anything

most people have ever had before,

so it has all the components that are there with a red wine,

but it's sparkling so it...

Like, it just feels alive,

so, like, this is, like, a fun thing,

like, burger night, pizza night,

lots of different things on the table,

to me, this fits in a very more casual setting.

This is just a really fun way to be able to drink wine

and, you know, you feel cool if you're not cool already.

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So moving on to the next region, Veneto.

So this is a small region in the northeast part of Italy,

but it actually produces more wine

than a lot of some of the other regions

that you think about when you think about Italy.

So this is Valdobbiadene,

and this is Prosecco Superiore, and this is 16 dollars.

This is why Italian wines can be confusing,

Prosecco is not a grape and Prosecco is not a region.

Prosecco is a protected name,

and based upon that protected name,

there's rules and regulations that you need to follow

in order to make Prosecco.

Prosecco grape is called Glera,

you have to use at least 85% Glera

in this particular bottling.

It just means that you're getting

a higher quality of Prosecco.

You see the mousse, you see the bubbles,

you see the carbonation in here, in the stems lightly.

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So peach, a little bit of nectarine.

That feels a little bit more refined,

but also understanding that it's Prosecco

and it's not supposed to be champagne.

If you can't beat what you get for 16 bucks

versus, you know, 50 dollars more for something else,

it's just a total different piece.

It serves a purpose in the sense that it's sparkling,

it's festive, it's fun,

it's a good way to get the party started.

This whole category to me comes in

as somewhat of an everyday luxury

where everybody gets to play.

I just come from the era where Prosecco,

we used it with orange juice to make mimosas

and that kind of stuff.

Obviously, it's changed and grown in popularity

over the last, you know, 25 years, and I can see why.

[dramatic whooshing]

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All right, we are taking off with Abruzzo,

so that's the new region that we're in,

this producer is Jasci, and this is 15 dollars.

So this particular wine is known for its value, right?

These are really great inexpensive wines that over-deliver.

You know, they say,

André, you know, we love wines from Europe,

especially Italy, like, the wines taste so much better

and they're so much cheaper,

they're definitely talking about

this particular region here.

There's no inherent land cost

when you're thinking about Old World wines,

especially Italy,

you know, the land has been owned by these families

for over 400 years, there's no mortgage.

Generally speaking, if you're thinking of New World

or you're thinking, like, let's say, Nappa,

you know, it's a million dollars an acre,

all those costs are passed on to the consumer.

These wines deliver value.

So, I mean, I think right off the bat,

cinnamon, vanilla, there's cranberry.

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That's a banger.

I think this has the right amount of acidity,

it has the right amount of fruit,

but as you can see, like, my mouth is salivating here,

like, it begs for food, I wanna eat, this is great.

You know, I'm in this business, I've been in this business,

I made my career in it,

but, like, I struggle to say, Montepulciano,

you know, I think for a lot of people

who aren't confident in saying it, they steer away from it,

we feel a little bit embarrassed.

I always feel like you just turn it

back onto the other person.

Now, how do you say that? Like, How would you say this?

You should not not want to try it

because you can't pronounce it.

[dramatic whooshing]

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Next up is...

We're traveling down to Sicily,

this region is Etna Rosso, and this is Terra Nere.

Etna is something that you might've heard of.

Mount Etna is one of the largest active volcanoes

in the world, and this is where these vineyards are planted,

so it's all grown on volcanic soil.

It really kinda imparts

this mineral-ity flavors into these wines.

A lot of the attributes that wine take on

are from, you know, minerals and things

that are imparted in the soil.

The roots to a grapevine run deep,

and the deeper that they go, they impart more flavors

from the soil that you might get.

You know, you would've thought

the color was a little darker, looks very beautiful to me.

Very rich aroma is kinda jumping out of the glass.

It feel very hearty. It smells peppery.

More refined, like, more like white pepper.

Ah, there's some fruit in the background,

bright fruit, but not sweet.

More currants and cherries. This is beautiful.

You get a metallic and mineral-ity,

but that's what I get, like,

from, like, you know, being a kid

and having a penny in your mouth.

These wines are so unique, and tasting this one today,

really realized that, you know,

I should probably drink a lot more of these wines.

[dramatic whooshing]

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So we're moving on, next region is Campania.

So to paint the picture for you, this is Naples, right?

Very picturesque, this is Amalfi Coast,

and this is definitely the Mediterranean climate.

This wine is Colli Lapio, and this is Fiano di Avellino,

one of my favorite white wines on the planet.

So Fiano is the grape.

Fiano's a very ancient grape

that I think originally originated in Greece,

so when you think about, like, togas,

gold leafs around people's head,

that's how far back that we're talking about going.

So Mount Vesuvius, another volcanic area,

the mineral-ity runs from the start to the finish,

just makes for a beautiful expression of white wine.

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Very perfumed, floral, very distinctive.

White flowers.

This is, like, kinda ripe fruit,

but almost on the tart side,

there's pear, there's a little bit of citrus.

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There's a stoniness to it, maybe flinty.

There's kind of a gravel-ness to it, like, it's...

The only way is, like, to...

If you ever licked a rock.

Like, I don't know,

I always feel special drinking this wine,

and this was one of the wines

that, like, I always love to serve

with certain dishes at Per Se,

I get excited about this wine,

and hopefully, that I'm excited enough

that you wanna go out and try it,

one of the great values in white wine.

[dramatic whooshing]

I'm excited, I'm hyped,

this is the reason why I got into wine,

to deep dive and to explore a country is awesome

and can only broaden our horizons.

The reason why I do it at all,

if it's just one person goes out and tries it.

[upbeat drum music]

[Person] You are looking at Julien's pronunciation guide,

where we look at how to pronounce better,

some of the most...

[André laughing]

This is so much longer than the pronunciation.

[Person] But how do you say

what you're looking for?

Today...

[indistinct]

We are looking at how to pronounce this word in Italian

meaning guide, we'll be looking at how to say

more confusing Italian vocabulary,

so in Italy, it's said as guido.

Guido. San Guido.

[phone clattering]

Okay.