What Makes Someone an Italian Wine Expert? (And Why It Doesn't Matter)

I was in my local Italian market last week, picking up olive oil and pasta. A woman nearby stood staring at the wine section, Brunellos lined up like soldiers. She looked lost. I asked if she needed help. She did—looking for something specific. I found it for her, pointed out a couple alternatives, and moved on.

Walking away, a thought flickered through my mind: "I bet she doesn't know she just got advice from someone who spent forty years working with Italian wine." I laughed at myself and kept walking toward the eggs. What a ridiculous thing to think.

But it raises a question I've been chewing on for years: what actually makes someone an Italian wine expert?

The Ugly American Has Come Home

When I first went to Italy in 1971, I got my introduction to what people over there were calling the ugly American. Loud, overbearing, disregarding of local cultural norms ("What do you mean, you don't have ice?"), totally unaware that the rest of the world did things differently than we did in the U.S. of A.

A few years later I took a train from Mexicali to Mexico City - three days, stopping at every stop. More ugly Americans, unconscious and insensitive to the culture hosting them. Downright rude, and when drunk, dangerous. 

Over decades and many trips to Italy, France, Greece, Spain, and Portugal, I witnessed too many times the embarrassing and unconscionable behaviors - the attitudes, the mores, of American tourists. Fortunately, I blended in and took a side view to their ignorant ways.

But now, the Ugly American has come home to roost. There's no escaping their thunderous ubiety in the United States, no security in the homeland from the hordes of somnambulists roaming the countryside and city with their oversized vehicles and their propensity to disregard the law. Just try going through a green light without checking if stragglers are racing through the red. It happens all the time. Turns out the ugly American scaled perfectly - from loud tourist to national ethos.

Kicking the Bucket List Habit ~ Five Ways to Surrender to Italy

I keep seeing these bucket lists. Italy bucket lists. Five things, ten things, twenty things you must do before you die. And they're all the same: the Amalfi Coast, a Tuscan villa with an infinity pool, dinner at some Michelin-starred place in Rome where you need a reservation six months out and a credit card that doesn't flinch.

Nothing wrong with any of that, I suppose. But that's not the Italy that's stayed with me for fifty-some years. The Italy that changed me wasn't the one I planned. It was the one I stumbled into when I got lost, when I let go, when I trusted a stranger's gesture instead of a guidebook.

Italy reveals itself differently. Not when you grasp at it, but when you open your hands.

Are you ready for Italy? Or are you only ready for the Italy you've already decided on?

So here are five experiences for your surrender list. Understand this: these aren't things to collect. They're ways to fail by tourist standards—and succeed by Italy's.

"Spas, Tours, Golden Hour Too - We'll Be Blessed If You Come"

From the "Oops!... they did it again" dept. 

 

Apparently word hasn't gotten around yet. 

This arrived in my inbox today.

 

 Click images to enlarge  

 [Editor's note: This is a lampoon. Any resemblance to actual 

press junket invitations is purely... well, you know.]

 

 

© devised and photo-synthesized by Alfonso Cevola 

limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

The Most Important Meal of the Day

Family outing Old California circa early 1930's - Nonna bottom right

Marion Nestle doesn't believe in breakfast. At 89, this nutrition expert who's spent decades exposing the food industry says most of the research claiming breakfast is the most important meal was sponsored by cereal companies. Kellogg's and General Mills needed to move boxes. They manufactured urgency. We bought it.

But nobody marketed the meals that actually mattered. My grandfather's brick bar-be-cue in old California. Every Sunday under the grape arbor. Probably the first place wine touched my lips. Those traditions—gathering, sharing a meal, an anonymous bottle or two of wine—they're gone now.

Persona Non Grata

Retrieved from my spam file 😉*

 

 

Click images to enlarge

 

* --- Editor's note: No actual consortia were consulted in the writing of this memorandum.

 

© imagined and photo-synthesized by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

wine blog +  Italian wine blog + Italy W

Midnight in the Cellar: Wine, Sleep, and the Slow Burn

Wine, time and transformation

The scent woke me. Not an alarm, not a voice - just that yeasty, intoxicating pull of fermentation working in the dark. It reached through the window, through my first sleep, drew me from bed the way the aroma of those ripe figs had drawn me when we first arrived in Bucita that September of 1977. Siren calls, both of them. Irresistible.

I made my way to the cellar. Cool stone underfoot, a single light carving shadows from the darkness. My cousins were already there, not doing much of anything. Just present. Just attending. We didn't talk much. Didn't need to. The wine was holding court - that gentle gurgle and hiss of wild yeast doing ancient work in wicker-wrapped demijohns that might have held our great-grandparents' wine.

The Great Inversion: How Italian Wine's Future Moved South

Here's the thing nobody's saying out loud: northern Italy is dying faster than the south.

Not literally. Not yet. But the vines are telling a story that contradicts oodles of years of wine history. Barolo is sweating. Chianti is scrambling. Prosecco is looking nervously at the thermometer. Meanwhile, on a volcano in Sicily and in the forgotten hills of Basilicata, indigenous grapes that have spent millennia dealing with heat and drought are suddenly looking like the smartest bet in Italy.

For the first time in modern wine history, the center of gravity is shifting. Not because of fashion or critics or investment. Because of physics. Because southern Italy—the part that was always too hot, too rustic, too other—turns out to be the part that already knows how to survive what's coming.

The Economics of Bullshit: Wine's Junket Folly

Scroll through Instagram on any given Tuesday and you'll see them: sun-drenched vineyard photos, perfectly plated lunches in Tuscan courtyards, selfies with winemakers, glasses raised against golden-hour light. Don't forget the hashtags — #blessed #winetasting #sponsored (maybe). The aesthetic is flawless. The credibility? Not so much.

But here's what you won't see: the unspoken contract. The implicit understanding that this week in Chianti, these meals, this business-class ticket, comes with an expectation. Not a requirement, mind you. Just an... understanding. You don't bite the hand that flies you first class and puts you up in a restored monastery. That would be ungrateful.

Is this journalism? Marketing? Or something murkier that we've all agreed not to examine too closely?

Has Wine Lost Its Moorings? A Response to Eric Asimov

Eric's been thinking hard about wine's troubles in his latest New York Times piece, laying out prescriptions for an ailing industry: lower prices, lose the snobbery, simplify offerings. Thoughtful stuff. But reading through it, one question kept nagging at me: Has wine lost its cultural moorings?

Prophecy and Perspective on the Blackland Prairie

The buffalos are coming back. The soccer moms in Escalades have upgraded to Teslas. And the crystal ball I peered into a decade ago sits on my desk, a little cloudier, a little wiser, mocking me gently as I thumb through that 2015 post about Italian wine regions to watch.

Ten years I wrote 5 Italian Wine Regions to Watch in 2015. Ten years - long enough to age a Barolo, to see a vineyard replanted reach maturity, to watch trends rise and fall like the tides at San Benedetto del Tronto. So what did I get right? What did I miss? And what does the murky sphere tell me now?

Your Essential Guide to Italy's DOC and DOCG Wines - 2025 Version

You're standing in front of a wine list. Barbaresco, Barolo, Brunello—all those B's swimming together. Someone at the table asks what the difference is between DOC and DOCG, and you realize you're not entirely sure yourself. Or maybe you are sure, but explaining it without sounding like you're reading from a textbook is another matter entirely.

I've spent forty years navigating Italian wine in America, and I still find myself circling back to these fundamentals. Not because they're complicated—they're not, really—but because understanding them changes how you see the entire Italian wine landscape. It's like learning to read the grain in a piece of wood before you start carving.

Ten Years After: What I Got Right (and Wrong) About Italian Wine in America

A decade ago, I threw some educated guesses into the wind about *where Italian wine in America was headed. Looking back is still easier than looking forward, but at least now I have some data. The past is dust, remember? But sometimes it's instructive dust.

A Hundred Years Wrapped in Etna’s Fiery Embrace

 Mapping the Life and Soul of a Wine Born from Fire and Time

 "A fascinating wine showing flower stems, orange peel and bark with some dried mushrooms. The structure and length are exceptional with a medium to full body and tight, focused tannins. Ends with a persistent, polished and refined finish. Caresses in every sense. Better in five years but if you get the chance to drink now, go for it!" 98/100

So wrote James Suckling in 2024 about the 2022 Terre Nere Etna Rosso 'Prephylloxera' La Vigna di Don Peppino/ Caldera Sottana

Last week, a few of us friends gathered for a long, laughter-filled luncheon—one of those radiant affairs where time bends, stories sprawl, and the corks keep popping. Among the bottles opened that day, one stood out—not just for what it was, but for what it promised to become.

The 2022 Terre Nere Etna Rosso 'Prephylloxera' La Vigna di Don Peppino is a wine forged in fire—literally, born on the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna, where ancient vines dig deep into ashen soil. It inspired something more than just notes and ratings. It begged for a myth.

So I decided to trace this wine’s imagined evolution over a hundred years—through time, memory, and metamorphosis.

To help, I enlisted my clandestine consigliere, ÅïΩfonso—an arcane ignis fatuus who whispers tweaks, nudges metaphors, and occasionally channels the Ancient Greeks. ÅïΩf claims to see the long arc of a wine’s soul. I'm simply the relayable messenger.

Who better to guide such a journey than Empedocles, the 5th-century B.C. Greco-Sicilian philosopher-poet who believed all matter arose from the eternal dance of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water—and who famously dove into the molten mouth of Etna in a bid for godhood.

Examining Cultural Appropriation in Italian-Inspired Cuisine: A Closer Look

Recently, I read an article in the local paper about a chef who opened an Italian-styled restaurant and the food they are serving. One dish on the antipasti list was a late addition after the chef tried a rosé vinegar and decided it had to be incorporated. The result was Prosciutto e Melone made with Texas cantaloupe, culatello (an Italian cured ham similar to prosciutto but from a different cut and aged differently), lightly candied hazelnuts, figs, and basil. The dish is dressed simply with olive oil and the lightly sweet rosé vinegar.

The chef noted ironically, “We have a lot more of what people consider traditional Italian,” but also admitted, “we couldn’t skip the opportunity to put chicken parmesan on the menu.”