Awsome Winemaker or War Criminal, You Decide!

[Thomas]

Drew, speak to any Italian (or other winery owner) across the globe and they will tell you that the U.S. is the first prize in their marketing plan. The reason: as small as we are on per-capita wine consumption, we are also a large nation with great potential and lots of money to spend on wine, and just about everything else. Italy is just larger than New Jersey; for that matter, Europe is tiny compared to North America. Think about market saturation, and then think about 300 million non-wine drinkers (sans about 10 million who do drink it) and you can see the potential that Europeans see.

Europeans are told that California wines represent the United States and since they taste the CA stuff, with its oak, extraction and loads of alcohol, they think that is what all America likes and wants, and so they produce it. The so-called super Tuscans are simply big, bombastic wines that bear no relationship to the place from which they come, and they have been the benchmark for sending wine to the U.S.

The big thing in many Italian wineries is called "barrique." Simply, it means oak fermentation and oak aging, and the Italians talk about it as if it were a new find, a find ready to produce a cash flow from abroad that will drown them in Lire, or Euros.

The regular Italians still drink the fruit of the earth--and they like it that way, as do I.