Italy

Italy makes more wine than any other country in most years, and it grows more distinct grape varieties than any other country by a wide margin. Estimates of the native total run from 350 in commercial use to over 500 recorded. This is the single most important fact about Italian wine. Where France exported a small set of grapes to the world, Italy kept a very large set at home, so an Italian wine list is full of names that appear nowhere else.

Every one of the twenty administrative regions makes wine, which is not true of France, Spain or anywhere else. The consequence is that Italian wine is regional in a domestic sense first. Barbera, sangiovese, aglianico and nero d'Avola were table wines for their own provinces long before they were exports, and the styles still show it. Most Italian reds have high acidity and firm tannin because they were built to be drunk with food, and they can taste austere on their own.

The north and the south are two different countries in wine terms. Piedmont and the north west make nebbiolo, barbera and dolcetto in a cool continental climate with real vintage variation. The Veneto and the north east make large volumes of pinot grigio, glera for Prosecco, and the dried-grape reds of Valpolicella. Tuscany and the centre are sangiovese country. The south, from Campania down through Puglia and into Sicily, is hot, was long a source of bulk blending wine, and is now the most interesting part of the country for value.

The classification looks stricter than it behaves. DOCG sits above DOC in law, but a number of the country's most admired wines are labelled IGT, because their producers wanted to use grapes the local rules forbid. The Super Tuscans of the 1970s made that route respectable. Read the producer and the zone before you read the tier.