The Essential Guide to Italian Wine 2024

Descrizione

Tenth edition of our Essential Guide. Ten years in which we have put to use tastings, visits, competitions, as well as meetings and conversations to create a book that can guide wine enthusiasts and consumers in choosing which wine to buy.

The guiding philosophy of this guide is essentiality, that is, not a review of thousands of wineries, but a selection of those that editor Daniele Cernilli and his team believe are the best and will be offering must-have wines on the markets in the coming months.

The wineries selected this year from the several thousand that are analyzed are 1,254, for a total of 3,189 wines reviewed, out of the more than 20,000 tasted and probably many more, if we consider all the wines that all our collaborators taste throughout the year. This is in fact a collective work that relies on the contribution of a team of expert tasters who move throughout the year to get to know the Italian wine reality closely. As every year, the “turnover” of companies is 10%: there are about 120 companies included that were not present last year (and almost as many that left).

Within our selection there is a kind of guide within the guide: the reporting of 560 wines that stand out for their excellent value for money, as they cost less than 15 euros in wine shops having, however, achieved a score of 90/100 and above, many of them costing even less than 10 euros. These wines are marked graphically with a thumbs up symbol, the famous like in practice, and of them there is also a mini-classification, which rewards the champion and lists the best 10 purchases.

Like any self-respecting guide, the DoctorWine guide also has its own quality pyramid, represented by the now well-known “little faces,” the seal with the face of Daniele Cernilli, who thus “puts his face on it” in certifying the quality of the award-winning wines. Triple veneer for wines to which we awarded 99 or 100/100, double for wines that reached 98/100 and single for those that earned 97, 96 or 95/100.Two wines were awarded 100/100 and thus have the triple facet, while there are 11 wines at 99/100, also with the triple facet. Basically, the top of the top. As many as 46 wines, on the other hand, deserved the double facet, which reached 98/100.

All the award-winning wines are listed in the introduction of each individual region while the general introductory pages contain only the triple and double facets in addition, of course, to the 16 Special Awards and the selection of the best 39 wines from a specific grape variety, wines made exclusively from a specific grape, the main ones grown in Italy.

Alongside the evaluation of the wines, there is also a zero- to three-star rating that ranks individual wineries according to their emblematic status in their local area, qualitative reliability and international image. The three stars, the top, are 126 this year.