Slow Wine is the brand new guide to Italian wines. Published by Slow Food Italy and released to the public on October 20th, Slow Wine offers a new approach to wine analysis. The book was presented as part of the Terra Madre/Salone del Gusto convention in Torino (Turin), Italy last week.
Wine Rating System
Rather than a focus only on individual wines and applying a random, highly subjective scoring system, the team of more than 200 enologists and wine journalists interviewed wine makers, visited cantinas, walked through vineyards, and conducted wine tastings.
The result of that two-year research effort is a 1,200-page volume offering expert advice that will answer almost any question. Producers, Italian wine merchants, journalists, wine clubs, and consumers looking to buy Italian wines can all find information about a winery or a wine.
Winery Grading Criteria
The Slow Wine team visited 2,100 cantinas from 56 different wine production zones. They tasted more than 21,000 wines, each a minimum of four times.
Hours of face to face interviews with the men and women who cultivate the vines, tend the fields, gather the harvest, or operate and maintain the equipment helped the research team to know each winery at every level.
The team translated that knowledge into six graphic ratings. Three refer to the winery, while the others focus on specific wines.
Of the more than 1,800 wineries listed in Slow Wine 2011, 155 are recognized for their particularly noteworthy synthesis of respect for the land, the environment, and the tradition and identity of the wine. These are identified with a small symbol, a snail – the logo for Slow Food – that defines the philosophy of efficiency and quality Slow Food admires.
A second recognition, illustrated by the image of a wine bottle, identifies those wineries that produces (based on all their wines) a drink of optimal quality. The final winery rating comes in the form of the euro symbol. This designates a winery with an excellent balance between the quality and the price of all their wines.
Wine Grading
The symbols used in Slow Wine 2011 also give advice on specific wines. Out of the 21,000 wines tasted, 8,400 are listed. Using color-coded print, the guide recognizes first, Slow Wine, a wine that brings to the glass a unique blend of fine taste and respect for the traditions of the territory. Others are identified as Grand Wines, those with superior flavor and balance. Finally, Daily Wine is a bottle, costing less than 10 Euros (about $14 US) that still deliver an excellent wine experience.
