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Monferrato - Photo © Francesco Gallarotti
Italy's
modern prodigious art and craft with wine scarcely begins to tell the story of its
people's perennial links to the wine. The nature of the place - the
influence of Mediterranean sunshine and mountain air currents on the
hillsides of the elongated peninsula and islands - favors what seems to be
an almost spontaneous culture of wine.
Italy's wine heritage dates back some 4,000 years to when prehistoric
peoples pressed wild grapes into juice which, as if by magic, fermented into
wine. The ancient Greeks, expanding into Italy's southern reaches dubbed the
colonies Oenotria, the land of wine. Etruscans were subtle and serene
practitioners of the art of winemaking in the hills of central Italy, as
attested by the art and artifacts left in their spacious tombs. The Romans improved the techniques that the Greeks and
Etruscans used.
While wine was popular in Rome it was forbade by the Islamic Code and consequently the areas
under Muslim control Southern Spain to North Africa to North India saw a
ceasing of winemaking. Winemaking greatly prospered under the Catholic
Church who held widespread influence over Christian Europe. Eventually,
winemaking capability and practiced extended to far-flung places like
England who enjoyed wine varieties of Sherry, Port and Madeira.
Demand for wine increased greatly with the population explosion in Rome from 300B.C. to the beginning of the Christian era. It
increased to over one million people and, as even the slaves drank wine,
much more wine had to be produced.
The Romans loved their wine, drinking it with every meal. However, as the
alcohol content was stronger than ours, they mixed it with large quantities
of water. They preferred sweet wine and strangely enough their most prized
wine was white. This came from the area that they thought was the best
wine-growing region, the Falernian region near Naples.
Unusual flavors were often added to the wine. The Romans liked to mix honey
with this drink to make an aperitif called mulsum. They
often added herbs and spices, but were known to mix wine with salt water
which must have given it an extremely bitter taste. Even chalk was sometimes
mixed with wine to reduce acidity!
The many contributions the Romans made to the art of wine-growing
included using props and trellises, improving the Greek presses used for
extracting juice, classifying which grapes grew best in which climate, and
increasing the yields.
The Romans exhibited good taste by deciding that aged wines tasted better
and preferred wines that were ten to twenty-five years old. They discovered
that wines which were kept in tightly closed containers improved with age
and became the first to store it in wooden barrels. They may also have been
the first to use glass jars and they also used corks.
They exported their excellent wine-growing techniques to other areas of
Europe and these were not changed for centuries. But demand for wine
decreased with the fall of the Roman Empire.
Monferrato - Photo © Francesco Gallarotti
Christian monks of France and northern Italy kept records of their
winemaking practices and grape cultivation. These records helped various
regions match themselves with the best variety grape for their soil.
Winemaking in Italy advanced rapidly through the 19th century, as methods of
vinification and aging were improved and the use of corks to seal reinforced
bottles and flasks permitted orderly shipping of wine worldwide. Such names
as Chianti, Barolo and Marsala became known in Europe and beyond.
A century ago several Italian wines were already recognized as among the
finest of their type: mainly Piedmont and Tuscan reds from the Nebbiolo
and Sangiovese vine varieties, but also white wines, still and sparkling,
dry or sweet, merited international respect.
Growers had complemented their local varieties with foreign vines such as
Cabernet, Merlot and the Pinots. There was evidence, then as now, that
Italy's multifarious climates and terrains favored vines of many different
types and styles, and consumers elsewhere, in Europe as well as in North
America, had come to appreciate these new examples of class.
Then came phylloxera and other scourges to devastate Europe vineyards around the
turn of the century. Italian growers, who had been working with thousands of
local vine varieties, were forced to reduce the numbers. Many opted for
newly developed, more productive clones of both native and foreign vines.
Taking advantage of the long, sunny growing season, they forced yields
upward, reasoning that there was usually more profit to be made from
quantity than quality.
Through the hard times of wars and depression, Italy became one of the
world's leading purveyors of low cost wine, often sold in containers of
outlandish shapes and sizes. Though such practices were profitable for some,
they did little for the image of Italian wines abroad.
Monferrato - Photo © Francesco Gallarotti
For decades responsible producers had been trying to tighten regulations and
put the emphasis on premium quality. But it was a not until the denominazione d'origine laws were passed in the 1960s that a new climate of
dignity and trust was created, providing the basis for what came to known as
the "modern renaissance" of Italian wine.
Depending on the vintage, modern Italy is the world's largest or second largest wine
producer. In 2005, production was about 20% of the global total, second only
to France, which produced 22%. In the same year, Italy's share in dollar
value of table wine imports into the U.S. was 32%, Australia's was 24%, and
France's was 20%. Along with Australia, Italy's market share has rapidly
increased in recent years.
Today, Italy is the largest producer of wine in the world with more
vineyards than any other place, including France.
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