It is called a fiasco. Fiasco? Yes, I know what you are thinking, but you’re wrong. I’m not talking about what happening in Congress with the debt ceiling. And I am not talking about the bonehead moves your favorite sports team’s coach always seems to make. A fiasco is a type of bottle. It is bulb-shaped and wrapped in straw that both protects the glass from breakage and keeps the rounded-bottom vessel from tipping over. Back in the day, if you spotted a fiasco you knew instantly what was inside: a tasty medium-bodied Italian wine that probably wouldn’t break the bank when you hit the che ..read more

There are hundreds of native grape varietals around the world. Italy has enough for Ian D’Agata to fill two substantial volumes:  Italy’s Native Wine Grape Terroirs and Native Wine Grapes of Italy.  Sometimes I think you could spend a lifetime enjoying just Italy’s native grape wines and never reach the end of the list. Native grape varieties are almost everywhere threatened by invaders. “International” grape varieties such as Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Sauvignon Blanc, are thought to be easier to sell than native varieties with unfamiliar names. We tend to side with t ..read more

Most of the world’s wine is produced by a relatively small number of very large wineries. But most wineries are very small. So wine is both big and small at once. That’s wine’s paradox of scale. You can see the paradox at work here in the United States. According to the annual Review of the Industry issue of Wine Business Monthly (February 2023), there were 11,691 wineries in the U.S. Eighty-three percent of the wineries, however, produced fewer than 5000 cases of wine in 2022 and 49% produced 1000 cases or less. Most of America’s wine was made by the less than half of one percent of makers in ..read more

Today’s Wine Economist is inspired by Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” The fox knows many things, Berlin wrote, drawing on an ancient Greek parable, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. People are like that, don’t you think? And there are wine regions like that too. The Lugana DOC on the shores of Lake Garda in Italy, for example, reminds me of the hedgehog, with its clear focus on one important wine. The Garda DOC, on the other hand, is home to many different ideas of wine. It is the fox. Please read our report below and see if you agree — and which wine critter you f ..read more

Pogo’s Dilemma is the theme of this week’s Wine Economist. Pogo’s Dilemma? It is a reference to Walt Kelly’s famous cartoon where the character Pogo reflects, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Sometimes life is like that, or at least it seems that way to me for the successful winegrowers in the Prosecco Superiore region. >>><<< As last week’s Wine Economist explained, the Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG region in north-east Italy is a remarkable success story. The historic home of Prosecco in Italy (and the source of some of the finest wines today), Prose ..read more

Economics is sometimes called the “dismal science” and I guess it is true that the Wine Economist is often focused on the problems that the wine industry faces (see the recent column on California vineyard profitability, for example).  So it is a pleasure to write about two wine regions in Italy that have achieved rather remarkable success. The regions I want to highlight here are Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG — home of many of Italy’s best sparkling wines — and Lugana DOC on the shores of Lake Garda, makers of one of Italy’s most distinctive white wines. Although the w ..read more

Sue and I are off to Italy in a few days to be part of an ambitious festival of wine literature sponsored by the Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore consortium in collaboration with Alessandro Torcoli, director of Civilta del Bere.   Here is a link to the festival website coulturafestival.it  The setting is the fantastic Castello San Salvatore in Susegana. The program features conversations with  noteworthy wine writers interwoven with focused wine masterclasses. All the senses will be stimulated, especially the imagination. My contribution will take the form of a ..read more

How you think about Italy and its wines depends upon how you approach them. Herewith are brief reviews of two recent books that take very different viewpoints. Italian Wine Unplugged 2.0 by Stevie Kim, Attilio Scienza, et. al. Mamma Jumbo Shrimp, December 2022. Italian Wine Unplugged 2.0 is a key part of Vinitaly International Academy’s program to draw attention to Italian wine’s wonders through education. As Stevie Kim writes in the Foreword, the idea is to take wine enthusiasts and help them become experts and, I think, also ambassadors for Italian wine to the world. It is a big job and so t ..read more

Andreas Viestad, Dinner in Rome: A History of the World in One Meal. Reaktion Books, 2022. All roads lead to Rome, they say, so the idea of a history of the world centered in Rome is not ridiculous. And, for food writer and activist Andreas Viestad, all pathways in Rome lead to his favorite restaurant, La Carbonara, so it is the only logical place to begin. When in Rome … Viestad (a favorite in the Wine Economist household for his television series New Scandinavian Cooking), takes us through a meal at La Carbonara, reflecting upon the experience as the courses follow their traditional sequence ..read more

It was the Susumaniello that first got my attention. Our friend John Marino asked if we’d be interested in tasting the wines of Aziende Agricole D’Addario. D’Addario produces a range of wines in Puglia, which is a region we want to get to know better. Southern Italy is having a moment as consumers, having “discovered” Sicily and its wines start to probe other regions. That, and the reputation of the winery, were enough to get my attention. Susumaniello: Old is New But, as I examined the winery’s listings, it was the Accanto Susumaniello IGT Puglia that made me stop in my tracks. Susumaniello i ..read more