Vino d'Italia

My A-Z Challenge series is about Italy, it's lifestyle, the country and other miscellaneous things in regard to it.

Do you like wine? If so, chances are you may be fond a a tipple from an Italian variety. It's been grown there for nearly 2000 years, with the Roman Empire prohibiting other  countries under their rule to make it, so it naturally flourished.

In Italy it's still common to dilute a glass of wine with some water, though with the better wines this doesn't happen so often. Children start drinking it at a younger age with it very watered down, it's mainly only drunk while eating a meal which also helps dilute the alcoholic affect. In fact you don't often see a drunken Italian, it's just not the done thing, this is partially attributed to the allowance of children being allowed to drink it to help demystify it, though I think the culture of a country also has a large part to play in this as it's not always been my experience of what I've seen in the UK, unfortunately.

There are several appellations ranging from Vini, the most basic, to Reserva which is wine which has been aged for some time. My family used to make their own wine and some branches of my family still do. When I was young they even still did the crushing by feet which I did join in with. Our wine wasn't called a decent glass of wine unless it had the odd wine fly floating in it - yuk! Definitely not a Reserva.

There are 20 regions with different types of wine, some being frizzante, sparkling. A couple of the nearest to my family are the Frascati, a nice white sparkling wine good for Summer in the garden, and Veletri, a good robust Rosso, red, wine. Good wines of other areas are the Barolo, a very nice red, Pinot Grigio, which is fairly popular, Chianti and Sangiovese. Moscato d'Asti is a sweet wine to be drunk only while eating a sweet or pudding or it tastes nasty, but miraculously tasting wonderful while eating something equally sweet.

It's lovely driving through the countryside and seeing the vineyards stretching out with bunches of grapes hanging over the sides of fences as you pass. The vineyards will make the most amazing wines, people do like French wine, America make decent wine now, South African wines gets good reviews but do try an Italian if you haven't already, maybe pair it with a good Italian cheese.

 Did you know that the red colour of red wines comes from adding the skins of red, purple or black grapes? I'm not actually much of a wine drinker, now preferring to use it in cooking where it leaves a nice flavour and no alcohol. Do you drink wine? Do you prefer to have it with a meal in the evening or perhaps during an afternoon picnic?