I recently tasted a wide range of Italian wines on the LCBO general list and was pretty impressed by much of what I found.
For a while, I've been fairly unimpressed by much of the entry-level Italian wine I was tasting. It wasn't that it was bad; it just didn't do anything for me, didn't rise above the ordinary.
Still, Italy held its ground quite well against the Australian onslaught and my recent tasting leads me to suggest you dip into Italy if you haven't put an Italian bottle in your cart recently.
It's a pretty big section and even if some of the more popular wines are nondescript, there are some very good values there, too.
One of the big changes over the past few years has been the arrival of IGT wines.
These are wines designated "Indicazione Geografica Tipica" in Italian wine law, meaning they are representative of the style of a designated geographical region -- which can be quite meaningless in some cases. The classification lies below the top-quality categories, DOCG and DOC. (It's the Italian equivalent to the French "Vin de Pays" category, which is below AOC in French wine law.)
Yet, although IGT is generally thought of as a lower classification, it's probably more helpful to think of it as a different category. IGT wines are regulated, but the regulations are less strict than for DOC and DOCG wines. For example, they can use a wider range of grape varieties, including "international" varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.
Some IGT wines, so-called "Super-Tuscans," are considered among the best Italian wines, so we should be careful not to think of them as inferior. Many of the less-known IGT wines in the LCBO are very good in quality and value, and they're worth having a look at.
The other development that's showing on the LCBO shelves -- this one goes back a number of years, but it's really having an impact now -- is the emergence of southern Italy as a source of wines that deliver quality and value.
It used to be that Chianti was the Italian wine region, followed by others in northern Italy. Southern wine regions, like Puglia and Sicily, were mostly known for churning out vast quantities of cheap wine for domestic guzzling.
While they still perform this function (although per capita wine-consumption in Italy has declined dramatically over the past 20 to 30 years), they also make very good wine for the international market.
Finally, there's been a shift in grape varieties. Sangiovese, the main variety in Chianti, now turns up almost everywhere. It's an excellent variety and it's interesting to compare sangioveses from different regions. Then there's primitivo, an Italian variety closely related to zinfandel. (At least one primitivo in the LCBO is actually labelled zinfandel). And Sicily's nero d'avola grape variety makes some quality wines that are available here.
On the white side, pinot grigio dominates the list, and I'll look at those in a later column. In the meantime, if you haven't rolled your cart down the Italy aisles recently, do. You'll pick up some real values.
Today, three Italian wines from the LCBO General List and one Vintages Essential (which is permanently in stock).