I is for Italy
I have always been fascinated by the literal in Islamic art, architecture and design. The Koran says you cannot have an image of a living thing so you plaster the insides of your gilded domes with birds and beasts which do not exist in nature. In the same way, the Koran says there are four rivers flowing out of Paradise, one each of water, wine, milk and honey. So Islamic garden designers endow their gardens with four fountains to express this idea.
I know which fountain I want to drink out of.
Which is a rather tortured way of getting to the four “founts” of Italian winemaking. Piemonte in the North, Tuscany in the centre, Veneto in the East and well, bits of the South in, er, the South. But first, as they say in the Eucharistic Mass, a summary of the law.
Italian wine laws, like all Italian laws, do not make sense. The average European country has about 15,00 laws to carry the average European citizen from cradle to grave. Italy has 150,000 laws - because they don’t repeal any laws. Go figure.
In the early part of the twentieth century, the Italians thought it would be a good idea to copy the French wine laws. So they created the Denominazione di Origine Controllata or DOC classification which, surprise surprise, was based on the French AOC or Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée system. What the Italians did not realise was that the AOC system was designed to further protect the status and therefore the prices of the well-established system of viticulture in the walled chateaux of Bordeaux and the cloistered clos of Burgundy.
By way of historical comparison, when Colonel Palmer (as he then was) bought the Chateau d’Gasq in 1814, Italian winemaking was a bunch of peasants running around stomping on grapes. In 1855, when the canny growers in the Medoc pressed and succeeded in getting their wines classified into crus or growths, Italian winemaking was a bunch of peasants running around stomping on grapes. In 1930, when the French introduced their AOC system, you know the drill by now. Suffice it to say, that between 1930 and the late 1950’s when the Italians brought out their DOC, things had not changed very much.
The DOC system, like the AOC, is based on geography. In Italy, this had two profound consequences, if you mixed your grapes from outside your area, your wines could not be DOC. Perversely, wines from single small holdings were, by definition, DOC regardless of quality. The Italians quickly tried to address the latter problem by introducing an upper tier called the Denominazione di Origine Controllata et Garantita or DOCG which supposedly came with some guarantee of a certain degree of quality.
This still failed to address the first and somewhat more serious problem. By not complying with the DOC or DOCG rules, some of Italy’s best wines were relegated to Vina da Tavola or VDT status. So at the beginning of the 1970’s, in keeping with spirit of reconciliation evidenced by the Second Vatican Council, the Italians drew on their tax laws and came up with a fudge. They invented a new qualification called the Indicazione Geografica Tipica or IGT which roughly translates into “wine indicative of a typical region” and which roughly corresponds to France's Vin de Pays category. Fudge, fudge.
Finally, in 1992, the DOC and DOCG classifications were relaxed in an attempt to bring the Super Tuscans (see my earlier blog) which contained non-indigenous grape varieties (horrors) such as cabernet sauvignon and merlot within the fold of the upper tier. This has not been a resounding success. Just remember this simple axiom - DOCG is not a guarantee of quality.
Well, so much for the law (nay, but we uphold the law). I noticed I have not mentioned a single indigenous grape variety, nor a single producer much less a single vintage or the time I was bouncing off each of the fountains on the Via delle Quattro Fontana (but that’s another story).
Tough, you’ll just have to wait for the next update.
I know which fountain I want to drink out of.
Which is a rather tortured way of getting to the four “founts” of Italian winemaking. Piemonte in the North, Tuscany in the centre, Veneto in the East and well, bits of the South in, er, the South. But first, as they say in the Eucharistic Mass, a summary of the law.
Italian wine laws, like all Italian laws, do not make sense. The average European country has about 15,00 laws to carry the average European citizen from cradle to grave. Italy has 150,000 laws - because they don’t repeal any laws. Go figure.
In the early part of the twentieth century, the Italians thought it would be a good idea to copy the French wine laws. So they created the Denominazione di Origine Controllata or DOC classification which, surprise surprise, was based on the French AOC or Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée system. What the Italians did not realise was that the AOC system was designed to further protect the status and therefore the prices of the well-established system of viticulture in the walled chateaux of Bordeaux and the cloistered clos of Burgundy.
By way of historical comparison, when Colonel Palmer (as he then was) bought the Chateau d’Gasq in 1814, Italian winemaking was a bunch of peasants running around stomping on grapes. In 1855, when the canny growers in the Medoc pressed and succeeded in getting their wines classified into crus or growths, Italian winemaking was a bunch of peasants running around stomping on grapes. In 1930, when the French introduced their AOC system, you know the drill by now. Suffice it to say, that between 1930 and the late 1950’s when the Italians brought out their DOC, things had not changed very much.
The DOC system, like the AOC, is based on geography. In Italy, this had two profound consequences, if you mixed your grapes from outside your area, your wines could not be DOC. Perversely, wines from single small holdings were, by definition, DOC regardless of quality. The Italians quickly tried to address the latter problem by introducing an upper tier called the Denominazione di Origine Controllata et Garantita or DOCG which supposedly came with some guarantee of a certain degree of quality.
This still failed to address the first and somewhat more serious problem. By not complying with the DOC or DOCG rules, some of Italy’s best wines were relegated to Vina da Tavola or VDT status. So at the beginning of the 1970’s, in keeping with spirit of reconciliation evidenced by the Second Vatican Council, the Italians drew on their tax laws and came up with a fudge. They invented a new qualification called the Indicazione Geografica Tipica or IGT which roughly translates into “wine indicative of a typical region” and which roughly corresponds to France's Vin de Pays category. Fudge, fudge.
Finally, in 1992, the DOC and DOCG classifications were relaxed in an attempt to bring the Super Tuscans (see my earlier blog) which contained non-indigenous grape varieties (horrors) such as cabernet sauvignon and merlot within the fold of the upper tier. This has not been a resounding success. Just remember this simple axiom - DOCG is not a guarantee of quality.
Well, so much for the law (nay, but we uphold the law). I noticed I have not mentioned a single indigenous grape variety, nor a single producer much less a single vintage or the time I was bouncing off each of the fountains on the Via delle Quattro Fontana (but that’s another story).
Tough, you’ll just have to wait for the next update.
posted by porcorosso at 9:58 PM
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