The Essential Guide to Italian Wine 2023

Descrizione

We have reached the ninth edition of our Essential Guide. Nine years in which we have put to good use tastings, visits, competitions, as well as meetings and conversations to create a book that can guide wine lovers and consumers in choosing which wine to buy. After all, that is the purpose of any self-respecting “guidebook.”

Every year we are faced with an increasing number of wineries that deserve to be included in our selection. The average quality of Italian production is constantly growing, which makes the work of the selectors increasingly difficult and perhaps, for this very reason, increasingly useful. We believe it is fundamental to be able to review all the wineries that really deserve to be reported without, however, overdoing the numbers, since the guiding philosophy of this guide is essentiality, that is, not the collection of thousands of wineries, but the selection of those that in the opinion of the DoctorWine team are the best and that in the coming months will propose on the markets wines not to be missed.

The wineries selected this year from the several thousand that are analyzed are 1,256, for a total of 3,150 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 669 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.

This year we awarded a 100+, a small “plus” sign to enshrine what was a real coup de coeur, as the French say, the wine of the heart (Veronelli would have said) that after bewitching the director Daniele Cernilli also convinced all of us. With him two other 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 51 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 3 and 2-facets in addition, of course, to the 15 Special Awards and the selection of 36 single-vineyard wines, the best made exclusively from a particular 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 nature in the territory they belong to, qualitative reliability and international image. Three stars, the top, number 119 with 5 new entries.