Rome – Luca Maroni’s Best Italian Wines 2026

Luca Maroni’s Best Italian Wines 2026: Rome hosts the 25th edition of the event dedicated to Italian wine excellence

From Feb. 20-22, 2026, Rome will once again become the capital of Italian wine with Luca Maroni’s I Migliori Vini Italiani, a historic event celebrating its 25th edition in 2026.

The venue for the event is once again the Salone delle Fontane at EUR, which will welcome winelovers, industry professionals and the press for three days of tastings, meetings and in-depth discussions dedicated to the best of national wine production.

The event in brief

Conceived and curated by Luca Maroni, an internationally renowned sensory analyst, together with Francesca Romana Maroni, CEO of Sens Eventi, the event represents one of the longest-running and most popular events on the Italian wine scene. The well-established format focuses on free and unlimited tastings, allowing visitors to build their own tasting path without constraints, following taste, curiosity and personal sensibility.

The tasting will feature hundreds of wineries from all regions of Italy, including the islands, selected for the sensory quality of their labels, an expression of the country’s extraordinary wine biodiversity.

What’s new in this edition

New in this edition of I Migliori Vini Italiani will be an in-depth look atdealcoholic wines
, which have been the subject of much talk in recent weeks on the occasion of the approval of the interministerial decree on the taxation of their production. Maroni’s goal will be to shed light on low-alcohol and no-alcohol wines that, despite the continuous growth in demand on the global market, raise numerous doubts.

The event will also be, as it is every year, an opportunity to pull the strings of the past 12 months, taking a timely snapshot of the state of wine in Italy: “Never has the standard of quality of all Italian wine denominations and types been so high, especially that of the cheaper, high-volume wines. As for quality/price and quality/quantity ratio, Italian wine competes at the highest level in the world.” That’s because, as Maroni himself specifies in the preface to the Yearbook of the Best Italian Wines 2026, while the most emblazoned labels have reached sky-high prices, lovers of good wine, thanks to the Italian Wine Renaissance that began in the 1980s, can now buy bottles of exceptional analytical and sensory quality, at very competitive prices.

Italy’s viticulture of excellence attracts like few other countries for its richness, biodiversity and tradition, but to show what is happening in the rest of the world as well, an engaging in-depth workshop on South American wines will take place curated by Luca Maroni during which visitors will be able to discover them by following a narrative that is both technical and perfectly understandable.

An additional workshop on different sparkling wine methods will enrich the event, with tastings of some fine labels.

As always, the event will also be enlivened by focus-edited by Francesca Maroni-on some gastronomic products for tasting that fully express the most authentic traditions of our territory.

The program of The Best Italian Wines 2026

It will feature the best productions of hundreds of companies, from every corner of Italy, selected for their careful work and respect for the grape fruit that is found in its integrity inside the glass.

Many events will enliven the three-day event:

Thursday, Feb. 19 (invitation-only event)

• Gala evening reserved for institutions and producers, in the Salone delle Fontane. Companies with the highest mentions will take the stage to collect their certificates of excellence.

Friday, February 20

• 6:30 pm, “Què hay de los vinos sudamericanos?” an unprecedented tasting of selected wines from South America.
• 7:30 p.m., workshop dedicated to two of Abruzzo’s iconic products. From goblet to plate, participants will learn all the secrets of Aquila salami and Spianata
• 8 p.m., green light for the highly anticipated tasting led by Luca Maroni, who will analyze the emotions released from the proposed glasses.
• 9:30 p.m., “Bread, Wine and Pecorino” workshop (to be repeated on each day) with tastings by Forneria Agricola Caccioppoli, a bakery in Sant’Antonio Abate (NA) that specializes in the production of bread made with km0 raw materials and in collaboration with the Consortium for the Protection of Pecorino Romano Cheese

Saturday, February 21

• 5 p.m., “The spirit of wine” workshop dedicated to dealcolated wines
• 6:30 p.m., workshop on the productsdel Salumificio Sorrentino, whose protagonists will be Salame Corallina and Guanciale
• 7:30 p.m. Luca Maroni’s tasting workshop: his savoir faire will take participants on a stroll through the sweetness, savoriness and acidity of the wines examined.
• 8:30 p.m., closing the day will once again be pecorino cheese with the workshop “Bread, Wine and Pecorino” led by Francesca Romana Maroni.

Sunday, February 22

• 5 p.m., “From Classic to Ancestral: the methods of sparkling wine”: bubbles will open the day
• 6 p.m., “Bread, wine and pecorino”
• 7 p.m. tasting led by Luca Maroni to discover all the sensory nuances of wine from different wineries in Italy
• 7:30 p.m., tasting “The elixir of love: jujube liqueur” by Aparo Liquori, a Sicilian brand in its debut, conducted by Francesca Romana Maroni,

Useful information

• Rome, Salone delle Fontane – EUR
• Feb. 20-21, 2026: 4 p.m. to midnight (last entry 11 p.m.)
• Feb. 22, 2026: 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (last admission 8:00 p.m.)
• Tickets in Online presale

All information and ticketing can be found on the event’s official website.