Italian Wines

[TheEngineer]

Well there are two parts to that answer. The first part, from Wikipedia

"Denominazione di origine controllata is an Italian quality assurance label for food products and especially wines (an appellation). It is modelled after the French AOC. It was instituted in 1963 and overhauled in 1992 for compliance with the equivalent EU law on Protected Designation of Origin, which came into effect that year.

There are three levels of labels:

DOC — Denominazione di Origine Controllata
DOCG — Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita
DO — Denominazione di Origine

DOCG seal on a bottle of Chianti Classico Riserva 1995All three require that a food product be produced within the specified region using defined methods and that it satisfies a defined quality standard.

DOCG regions are subterritories of DOC regions that produce outstanding products that may be subject to more stringent production and quality standards than the same products from the surrounding DOC region.

The need for a DOCG identification arose when the DOC denomination was, in the view of many Italian food industries, given too liberally to different products. A new, more restrictive identification was then created, as similar as possible to the previous one so that buyers could still recognize it, but qualitatively different.

A notable difference for wines is that DOCG labelled wines are analysed and tasted by government–licensed personnel before being bottled. To prevent later manipulation, DOCG wine bottles then are sealed with a numbered governmental seal across the cap or cork."

THe above is pretty sanitized as there is much more history than what should fit in a web post. But you might get the sense that it is confusing, and might not be entirely effective. That is the second part. The rankings are really only a measure of if the producer followed quality rules and not really how good their wines are. It certainly should follow that DOc is better than DO and DOCG is better than DOC, etc,. but this is not always the case. In fact this is one of the factors that lead to producers voluntarily leaving the ranking system and producing wines of "higher (again subjective)" quality which later was coined "Super Tuscans" for one fo the areas (and the resulting IGT label). The country is in the middle of relaxing some DO, DOC and DOCG rules to accomodate more modern wine making techniques and other varietals.

So in general, you can use it as a hint of quality, especially at the DOCG level (though many will argue and as an example, Romagna was the first official DOCG region....you say where??..yup, not barolo, not barbaresco,....Romagna). I would go after a few producers that you like or have a good reputation to start that are widely distributed. Something like Fontodi (Chianti), Masi (Armarone), La Spinetta (Moscato d'Asti, Le Pin,and many others), Ruffino, etc as moderate price starts. Unfortunately Great italian wines are also very expensive.

As an aside, there is an italian publication that rates wines according to a three glass rating. The book is called Gamero Rosso and it is in the spirit of other wine critics who sample then rate wines. Amazon.com sells this.

Hope this was a good start for you but look online for MUCH MORE information.