Italy is home to some of the oldest wine-producing regions in the world and has overtaken France as the world's largest wine producer. Italian wine is exported around the world and is also extremely popular in Italy: Italians rank fifth on the world wine consumption list by volume with 42 litres per capita consumption. Grapes are grown in almost every region of the country and there are more than one million vineyards under cultivation.
Etruscans and Greek settlers produced wine in Italy before the Romans started their own vineyards in the 2nd century BC. Roman grape-growing and winemaking was prolific and well-organized, pioneering large-scale production and storage techniques like barrel-making and bottling.
Read more about Italian Wine: History, Italian Appellation System, Geographical Characteristics, Italian Wine Regions, Italian Grape Varieties, Super Tuscans, Wine Guides, Vino Cotto
Famous quotes containing the words italian and/or wine:
“If the study of his images
Is the study of man, this image of Saturday,
This Italian symbol, this Southern landscape, is like
A waking, as in images we awake,
Within the very object that we seek,
Participants of its being.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Like a tale of little meaning though the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer—some, ‘tis
whispered—down in hell”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)