Amazon.in:Customer reviews: Vino: The Essential Guide to Real Italian Wine

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Sdmarciano

ESSENTIAL, the BEST and ONLY resource you need for real Italian wine

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 14 January 2023

This book is THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE for anyone who loves Italian wine. I love wine, and Italian wine in particular, but I have always found it difficult to wade through all the local grape varieties, countless producers, and unhelpful Italian wine denominations to find truly memorable wines. This book changed all that. The authors take you through each region in Italy (even the less famous ones), detailing the important, often lesser-known grapes and introducing the winemakers who are letting these grapes shine (native yeast, organic/biodynamic practices, everything-by-hand, limited oak, etc.). I don't enter a wine shop anymore without this book in hand and have a list as long as my leg of new regions, grapes, and producers to explore. Case in point - I had to jump through a lot of hoops to find a wine by the guys in the photo I posted, but when I did, it was worth every ounce of effort. And now I can wax poetic about wines from Valle d'Aosta! It's strange to say that a book on wine changed my life, but here we are.

Browner

Great Tour of Italian Wine and a Fresh Look at Wine Classification

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 26 April 2022

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With a history that dates back many centuries, it might be reasonable to assume that everything that could—or should—be written about Italian winemaking had already happened. The reality, though, is that consumer tastes, environmental conditions, production methods, and regulatory mandates change so much from year to year that it is virtually impossible to write a single treatment that captures the essence of the topic for all time. So, a book such as Vino: The Essential Guide to Real Italian Wine that provides a fresh look at viniculture across the entire peninsula, along with stories of the men and women devoted producing wine the right way, is a welcome addition to the countless existing works. Co-author Joe Campanale, a celebrated New York-based sommelier and restauranteur, has spent his career developing an expertise in this area and that joy, passion, and knowledge comes through on every page of this impressive volume.

The book is divided into three distinct parts, beginning with a potentially controversial discussion of how the highly regulated DOC appellation system that has been used to classify Italian wines for more than a half century can be a highly misleading guide to the quality of what ends up in the glass. As an alternative, Campanale suggests the use of the Vino Vero Venn (VVV) diagram, which triangulates wine quality on three dimensions: the use of grapes native to a region, the quality of the terroir, and the talents of artisan winemakers. If nothing else, the VVV system reveals the author’s underlying bias that only those bottles produced with native grapes using natural methods can be considered as "real" wines, or vino vero. I found this to be an interesting way to look at wine production and one that has the benefit of focusing on the characteristics of the product itself instead of classifications dictated by government regulation. A second section of the book then provides a quick synopsis of new styles—such as orange wines—that have emerged using VVV-friendly production methods.

The third section, which is by far the longest and most detailed, offers a region-by-region breakdown of what wine is being made right now throughout Italy, a discussion that goes far beyond the Chianti, Barolo, and Prosecco we are already familiar with. For each of the twenty regions—from Valle D’Aosta in the north to Sicily in the south—the authors provide an exhaustive overview of the history and growing conditions in the area, which grapes are considered native, and profiles of many of the current and recent past producers who have defined the industry. Much of this information was highly informative and did a great job of highlighting the diversity that exists across the country, including why producing wine with grapes native to an area is so important. The only real negative thing I can say about this material is the excessive amount of space spent on the growers’ biographies; although these were uniformly thoughtful and well-written, the people profiled will mean little to anyone who is not intimately connected to the business.

Overall, Vino is a thoroughly researched and passionately rendered look at a topic that will certainly resonate with a lot of readers. The authors bring a new point of view to a very old topic and their ability to communicate both their expertise and their enthusiasm was quite striking. I suspect that this volume will be a welcome addition to the bookshelves of all of us who love everything about Italian wine.

5 people found this helpful

Hande Z

Salute

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 20 October 2022

Verified Purchase

This is a book about Italian wines – the grapes, the regions, and emerging styles. It differs from most other books on Italian wines in that this book avoids wines under the main-stream DOC and DOCG classification. Hence, familiar wines like Solaia, Masseto, Flaccianello, or Biondi-Santi, some of the kingpins of the DOCG class, are not featured. There are some exceptions that receive a good mention – the famous Amarone wine by Quintarelli, and the Raja of Italian wines – Gaja.

The author goes about tracking smaller producers but ones that he thinks produces good Italian wines. He introduces us to these wine-makers and their vineyards, and, of course, their wines. Take Tuscany, for example, this book introduces us to Giovanna Morganti and her organically grown Sangiovese wine, and Stella Di Campalto, whose Di Campalto wine is actually quite well-known. Conspicuously missing are the ‘Super-Tuscans’.

This is thus a rich and useful book that broadens one’s horizon of Italian wine. The problem is that wines from the featured vineyards are probably hard to find outside Italy (and maybe USA). The book is well-written and complemented with lovely photographs. Some are breath-taking pictures of the wine landscape and wineries, and many are portraits of the wine-makers. Those are probably invaluable.

Sarah K

Great gift

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 15 January 2023

Verified Purchase

Got this for my father for Christmas - he loved it!

Dave Barnes

Excellent book for the Italian wines nerd.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 22 December 2022

Verified Purchase

Dense reading.
Good writing.
I learned a lot about Italian wines.
Recommended.

Brandi

As informative as it is beautiful

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 30 November 2022

Verified Purchase

I bought this as a gift for a friend but will be buying one for myself as well. It's so stylish and informative!

BRK212

Remarkably informative, yet interesting and personal reference on Italian wine

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 5 May 2022

Verified Purchase

There's a lot to love about this book!

As others mentioned, I think it strikes a great balance on material between comprehensive reference and the author's personal point of view on what's interesting and exciting to drink.

There's a lot of factual information here to learn about the various regions with maps, overviews of major and minor grapes you'll find, and intricate details on how wine is actually made. I came away feeling like this had all the information and more I'd want on the technical context but didn't really read those parts cover to cover. There's a ton of information that I think I'd come back to when drinking something new, but it's also not a 1000 page encyclopedia for professionals; it's written for the enthusiast.

What I really loved was how it focused on the winemakers as craftspeople, and centered on artisanal wine specifically. The author adds his opinion on the subject, and the book is full of personal stories, pictures of all these winemakers he has a personal relationship with, and gorgeous landscape photos. You really get a sense of where the wines come from and who makes them.

This book focuses on the kind of wine I think most people want to drink - authentic stuff, made by skilled craftspeople, that feels special to open, and doesn't cost a fortune. There's a long list of great finds in this book that aren't going to be for sale at your corner liquor store or grocery, but aren't impossible to find or wildly expensive either. I felt like I was constantly searching new names online and building a list of things I wanted to try.

Anyone with an interest in Italian or artisan wine should definitely get this book!

2 people found this helpful

William R. Lucas

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 9 January 2023

Verified Purchase

Lots of information about the author's favorite winemakers in a particular region and some nice stories, but not very much about the actual winemaking styles of those various regions, the terroirs or characteristics of the grapes - other than a very sparse overview. "Vino Italiano" by Bastianich, although over 20 years old now, remains a far better guide to Italian wines. I had hoped to see how much Italian winemaking had evolved since Bastianich' 2000 publication - sadly this volume fails to deliver.

JustSomeGuy

Overly Narrow Survey of Italian, Not Worth Your Time

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 11 January 2023

Verified Purchase

The book's selection of producers is chosen from a very, very, very, very small box. I was shocked at how many leading, important, influential (AND INTERESTING) producers were left off their lists entirely. They state their clumsily crafted selection criteria in a chapter, and they are so narrow that they make the book an exercise in futility.

1) Native grapes. Sounds good, but the more the reader thinks about it the more backwards it is revealed to be. Consider ALL new world wine: California, Chile, Australia, S. Africa, and so on. These entire regions would be excluded according to this standard because they have no native wine grapes (Chile, I know about your merlot clone, but you and I both know its really from France!). Amazingly small-minded.

2) Terroir. Again, sounds good, but the author interprets this to mean wineries that have been held by the same family for multiple generations. So, this excludes new talent that didn't inherit a vineyard from their parents and grandparents. Wow... Okay...

3) Artisan. What they really mean here is very small and biodynamic, which is sort of like organic. I actually like the idea behind biodynamic wines, but call it that. Worse, their other criteria eliminated all the best and most progressive biodynamic producers because they were often first-generation owners (eliminated by criteria 2) who were wildly successful (growing beyond "small" in this criteria).

In short, the reader is left with wineries that have been doing the exact same thing with the exact same wines for generations with mostly very little success to show for it. There are some gems for sure, but mostly duds. This is not an authoritative overview. This is not a good introductary survey of producers. Take one of these criteria, call it what it is, and focus on it -- maybe you have an interesting niche book. But all three taken together, and it's just a list of mostly sad unimaginative wineries who are copying notes from the true leaders in biodynamics (who aren't even listed here!).

Credit where credit is due. Many of photos are actually very nice. You can tell they spent extra on the photographer. If you want a coffee table book that no one will look at very closely, this might be for you, but might I also suggest supporting better-quality, eye-friendly books like Wine Folly, Wine Simple, and the Finest Wines of Tuscany and Central Italy.

For the serious minded, find something else, this isn't worth your consideration.

Rachelle

Great starter into Italian wines

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 19 October 2022

Verified Purchase

I'm in the industry, I bought this as a reference guide. This a good starter book if you want to visualize the culture but also remember the main regions to common household names. It's hard to find well written wine books that get the point across. If you want an easy read that summarizes it for you; this is a must.

One person found this helpful

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