Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy Author: Joseph Bastianich | Language: English | ISBN:
B0086N7B82 | Format: PDF
Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy Description
At one time, Italian wines conjured images of cheap Chianti in straw-wrapped bottles. More recently, expensive “Super Tuscans” have been the rage. But between these extremes lay a bounty of delicious, moderately priced wines that belong in every wine drinker’s repertoire.
Vino Italiano is the only comprehensive and authoritative American guide to the wines of Italy. It surveys the country’s wine-producing regions; identifies key wine styles, producers, and vintages; and offers delicious regional recipes. Extensive reference materials—on Italy’s 300 growing zones, 361 authorized grape varieties, and 200 of the top producers— provide essential information for restaurateurs and wine merchants, as well as for wine enthusiasts.
Beautifully illustrated as well as informative,
Vino Italiano is the perfect invitation to the Italian wine experience.
- File Size: 4063 KB
- Print Length: 544 pages
- Publisher: Clarkson Potter; Reprint edition (July 11, 2012)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0086N7B82
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #84,439 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #4
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Drinks & Beverages > Wine Collecting - #8
in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Beverages & Wine > Wine & Spirits > Collecting - #35
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Drinks & Beverages > Spirits
- #4
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Drinks & Beverages > Wine Collecting - #8
in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Beverages & Wine > Wine & Spirits > Collecting - #35
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Drinks & Beverages > Spirits
Vino Italiano is a difficult book to describe. It's part wine guide, part travelogue, part cookbook, and part cultural history. It's a love song to Italy and Italian wine that has the flavor of a coffee table book, but without the color plates and oversize format. It's a reference work and a highly personal account of a subject the authors know well and enjoy sharing. In short, it's a classic.
The book lovingly covers all of the regions of Italy. Each chapter is a self-contained essay on an individual Italian region, with wine as the focal point. But don't think that the wine commentary is the only reason you will enjoy owning this book. It's full of absorbing discourses on Italian life, told through anecdotes that illustrate the character of a region's wines, food, people and history. For example, you'll go on a Tuscan boar hunt, watch a soccer match between Lazio and Roma, learn about the art of making Balsamic vinegar in Emilia-Romagna and discover where the Italians hid Mussolini under house arrest in the mountains of Abruzzo.
Each chapter is organized in the same fashion: an introductory essay that illuminates something telling about the character and history of the region; a simple map locating the DOC areas; descriptions of white, red, sparkling and sweet wines grown, highlighting significant producers; wine production statistics, including recent successful vintages; a few select restaurant recommendations; a guided tasting that compares and contrasts flights of wines within the same DOC's; and a recipe or food indigenous to the province with wine selections to match. Throughout are portraits of key people and properties that set the tone for the Italian wine scene today.
Vino Italiano is not the best book if what you need is an introduction to Italian wine. But if you already know there is a big difference between a Vino Rosso di Montepulciano and a Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, then you'll no doubt appreciate this informative and easy-to-read book as much as I do.
This book gives the lover of Italian wine, food, and culture a lot to be excited about. It is divided into chapters that cover an Italian region (or in one case, two minor regions) and each chapter contains more information than some lesser books contain in their entirety. Included are regional recipes, maps and other essential information (e.g. significant producers, grapes grown, etc.) related to its wines, and stunning black-and-white photos that make it tempting to regard this as a coffee-table book. But I think the best part of each chapter is a well-written and entertaining essay that includes anecdotes that frame the character of the people, history, and culture of the region being described.
Of course, the centerpiece of it all is wine. But authors David Lynch and Joseph Bastianich understand that even in Italy, that subject cannot stand alone, and so they bring in discussions of hunting, and football, and fashion, and Mussolini, and cars, and artisan vinegars, oils, and cheeses.
Reading over what I have written here, I feel that I have not done this book justice. There is such a range of well-researched information here presented in such an accessible way that a different reader might pick it up and enjoy the book just as much as I do but for an entirely different set of reasons.
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