The Culture of Wine: Italy
Italy’s history goes back millennia, the Romans founding their Empire across Europe, the beginning of viticulture in many regions. But Italy as we know it is a modern construction, created in 1861 through the risorgimento spear-headed by the general, Garibaldi. He unified the various duchies, principalities, and kingdoms of Italy which had often been at war with each other. Two countries, the Vatican and San Marino, persisted after the unification, but everywhere else the idea of Italy is concrete—although, as is the Italian way, fiercely disputed.
One of the challenges of unification was to share a common language. The Florentine dialect was chosen, as it was the language of Italy’s great writers from the 1200s and 1300s, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The range of dialects across Italy explains why there are so many names for grape varieties even when they’re the same, and why food dishes are specifically associated with regions and towns.
Italy remains a country that contains many countries and cultures, also influenced by what surrounds them. Piemonte was once part of the Duchy of Savoie, which the Kingdom of Sardinia also belonged to. Alto Adige is also called Südtirol because it’s next to Austria and German is commonly spoken: the Italian language is there because Mussolini transported people to the region to make it more part of Italy. Friuili is next to Slovenia; when the latter was part of Yugoslavia growers owned vineyards on both sides of the border.
Central Italy is Italy at its most archetypal: beautiful with hills and lakes, famous cities like Florence and Siena separated by Chianti vineyards. Wine quality varies, with some of Italy’s greatest wines and some its worst due to unscrupulous producers capitalising on the fame of regions like Chianti, Soave, and Valpolicella. But there’s also a grey industrial feel to some of the cities like Milan, and separatist, populist politics.
Shakespeare set “Romeo and Juliet” in Verona, inadvertently making a random balcony the most cringe worthy tourist attraction in the world. Verona is one of the few Italian cities that doesn’t have an Anglicised name. Milano is Milan, Venezia is Venice, Torino is Turin, Firenze is Florence, Roma is Rome, Napoli is Naples, Sicilia is Sicily, Sardegna is Sardinia, Genoa is Genova, Livorno is, bizarrely, Leghorn. This shows the international importance of Italy’s culture, as well as the English inability to learn foreign words.
Southern Italy is wilder, dry, mountainous, and volcanic, separating into the toe and heel of Italy’s boot. Naples is anarchic, Mediterranean, home to the Mafia and the pizza, frenzied host to Maradona, looking out towards Sicily which also has its volcanoes and Mafiosi. The south of Italy was long poor and neglected, but it retains its historic character: baroque architecture, homes and bars dug into caves, grape varieties which may (or may not) date back to Roman times and which produce some of the finest wines in the country.
Italy is an impossible country to fully understand, let alone summarise. Alpine mountains to the north where Italy is more central Europe than southern; mountains in the middle, forming its spine; seas on every side, blue and bright; the islands, small and large; the disputes and the hand gestures; the football rivalries; the grape varieties which have countless different names; the grape varieties which are completely different but have the same name. Welcome to Italy and embrace the chaos.