John Clerides from Marquis Wine Cellars talks about Italian wine
Greetings everyone Marquee TV I’m here to talk about Italy today and there’s no other region that is really is vast uh and confusing uh as Italy they make wine north south east west it’s it’s it’s an incredible uh indigenous varieties uh stuff that that we I’ve never even heard
Of so where do you start learning about Italy well pick the popular region first uh pick um uh let’s say pedmont as an example now here’s a really good book called the Mystique of bolo is a great book to learn about Baro or the wine atlas of Italy right and
Then this will give you a reference point there is an Italian uh book a magazine it’s called gambera Roso and of course they specialize in Italian wines and they rate the wines on glasses or bti one one glass two glasses three glasses um make a list of you know you
Know who consistently gets written about like a gasa or curno or a masolino and those are sort of the standard producers now pedmont is very very much like burgundy but without the classifications meaning lots of hills lots of little Crews lots of small producers north side
Of the north side of the Hill West Side High up in the hill north north side of the Hill etc etc etc and you have to learn those because they haven’t Quantified them in terms of put them putting them in any any type of legislation uh which would be a
Nightmare to do in Italy right now because of uh just marketing techniques everybody understands marketing Now 50 60 years ago they didn’t and uh uh it would have probably been a whole lot easier but they didn’t do it so there’s a lot of due diligence on your part in
Terms of where the um uh who the good producers are and where the good Vineyard sites are and once you have it sort of got down and that comes from drinking a lot of wine uh you can move on to a next region like Tuscany or um the Veno for
Amaroni um there’s a lot of emerging regions especially in the South and it was actually put put really kind of interestingly to me uh by an Italian guy who was speaking about southern Italy and one of the reasons why southern Italy was so sleepy for so many uh years
Was because of the mob and if anyone went in there to invest in the in the region they would say you know I need to live I need to eat I got to feed my family or uh I’m going to make sure you don’t succeed so now
Uh that’s been taken care of and you’re seeing more and more people um move into the South with modern wine making techniques modern viticultural practices they have some older Vines and they’re uh highlighting the the the Region’s uh uniqueness and there’s some really cool stuff happening in the southern part of
Italy so it’s just a matter of continually to read or find yourself a good wine store a good wine merchant that loves Italian wine and um and take his advice there’s a really cool store which I have not been to in New York it’s called the Italian wine merchant
And that’s by the name of that’s all they specialize sounds pretty cool because this guy knows Italian wines like the back of his hand and I mean considering the size of the country the population uh and its wine making history there’s a lot to learn in Italy
So uh bonjo and good tasting cheers thanks for listening