ITALIAN WINES

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Italy is home to some of the oldest wine-producing regions in the world, and Italian wines are known worldwide for their broad variety.

Italy, closely followed by France, is the world’s largest wine producer by volume. Its contribution is about 45–50 million hl per year,

and represents about ⅓ of global production.

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.

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The wines are classified with the quality system in force in Italy, a unique system adopted in all regions.

The categories in force in the Italian system are, from lowest to highest, Table wines, IGT (IGT), DOC (Denomination of Controlled Origin)

and DOCG (Controlled and Guaranteed Denomination of Origin).

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