Italy’s
Finest Values 

by Antonio
Galloni

At the risk of sounding like a broken record,
there has never been a better time to be a wine consumer. The range of high-
quality wines coming out of Italy today – and other countries, too – is amazing
for its breadth and diversity. Growers are increasingly paying more attention
to their entry-level wines because these are the only bottles that are selling
well in today’s market. In many cases, producers are using juice that was once
destined for their higher end wines to bolster their less expensive bottles.
Even better, the recent weakness in the euro has made many of the wines in this
article more affordable than they have been in years.

Tasting through Italy’s wines under $25 is
always a fascinating exercise. Each year I come across seemingly dozens of
wines that are new to me, many of which deliver incredible value. The country’s
diversity of microclimates, terrains and winemaking styles is breathtaking. Moving all the way down south, the island of
Pantelleria, which is best known for its sweet wines, is actually closer to eastern
Africa than it is to the Italian mainland. These are but two brief examples of
a country that consistently delivers a mind-bending array of bottles readers
can enjoy without breaking the bank. I tasted a total of 784 wines for this
report, of which 455 (58%) are reviewed in this article.

It is always
difficult to speak about vintages in a broad article such as this one. Most of
the new releases in the under $25 category are 2008s and 2009s. Vintage 2008 is
proving to be inconsistent across the mainland. The spring was quite damp,
which created problems with rot in many regions and forced producers to treat
the vines more aggressively and more often than is normal. In general, the 2008s
are mid-weight wines with good acidities but modest structures. Thus far I have
tasted very few wines that I would want to follow for more than a few years.
Overall, 2008 appears to be more successful for whites than reds. 

The key event in
2009 was a massive heat spike throughout much of Italy that began in mid-August
and lasted about ten days, a period when temperatures typically begin to fall,
particularly in the evenings. I visited Alto Adige, Friuli and Tuscany during
that time and it was scorching hot, even at night. In Alto Adige, which excels
in steely, mineral-driven whites, I came across a number of excessively heavy
wines. Based on what I have tasted so far, 2009 seems to have favored reds over
whites, but it is early days, and I have yet to sample many of the most
important wines, both whites and reds. One thing does seem fairly obvious,
though. For reds, 2009 is more consistent across the board than 2008.

This year I was
particularly struck by the wines I tasted from Valle d’Aosta, a small Alpine
region nestled between northwestern Italy and Switzerland. A number of the best
producers are high-quality cooperatives, which keeps prices low, while the
wines remain largely unknown to the broad public. That won’t always be the
case, but today Valle d’Aosta offers some of the finest values in Italy.
Readers will have to spend some time getting familiar with Valle d’Aosta’s
indigenous grapes (Picotendro, Petit Rouge, Mayolet, Fumin, Petit Arvine and
Prié Blanc, to name a few), but it is an exercise well worth the effort.

A Word on Coverage of Italy For The Rest of 2010

Because of the
recent birth of my daughter, I did not make my annual summer trip to Italy this
year, which is when I typically do a large number of tastings, particularly of
wines that do not enjoy wide distribution in the US. I have therefore moved
coverage of Tuscany and northern Italy back one issue to October and December
respectively. Many of the less expensive wines from those regions are reviewed
in this Values report, so I will not be surprised if the Tuscany and northern
Italy articles are ultimately somewhat smaller than they were last year. I will
be using our website, to keep readers informed of the most exciting wines I
taste in between publishing cycles.
Lastly, readers who need a fix of higher-end Tuscan wines may want to see my
reviews of thirty or so new releases I posted on the site a few months back.

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