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speakup

Italy is known for wine. Mostly for red wine. And tomato sauce. Maybe they love anything red but for now let's stick to red wine.

I've written at length about the extraordinary winemaking that occurs in the North-eastern Veneto region of Italy. They produce everything from straight forward food-friendly wines (Valpolicella) to monster level fruit bombs (Amarone).

I will, in time, get around to two other regions that are sure to attract your attention. They are Tuscany and Piemonte (Piedmont). Tuscany is the region famous for Chianti and some other-worldly wines known unapologetically as Super-Tuscans. Piemonte is the home of Barolo and Barbaresco, two of the world's most age-worthy wines.

These wines can be relatively expensive. I will always be searching for the best buys available but generally speaking most are out of the average person's price comfort-zone.

I find one of the reasons for this a bit frustrating. I've already mentioned that the price of bottles and cardboard is increasing rapidly in Europe and that we're starting to see an impact on wine prices here.

Italy is also known as one of the most rule-crazy wine producing countries in the world. They have rules for everything and sometimes they even follow them. Take Chianti for an example.

Last year, they decided that all wines labelled as Chianti had to be bottled inside of that region. I am in full support of all Chianti wine coming from grapes from that region. I'm even prepared to accept that all Chianti wine should be made by wineries inside of that region.

But I don't really care if the finished wine is trucked outside of that region to be bottled (we're obviously talking about some of the lower quality wines here).

When the new law was enforced, the wine world quickly learned that there wasn't enough bottling capacity inside of Chianti to handle production. Thus, bottlers had a new tool to jack up their prices.

Anyone who couldn't or wouldn't pay the new higher prices was forced to truck their wine outside of the region. If they did, they could no longer label their wine as being a Chianti and thus were forced to sell their wine for a lot less money. A potential source of a bargain if you can find such wine.

When I look to Italy, I expect to find red wines that are exceptionally food-friendly. As implied above, value isn't often a part of my expectation. But I've discovered a new region that is producing wines of quality with a very interesting flavour profile while maintaining classic food-friendliness. The area is Puglia.

If Italy's map looks like a woman's boot, then Puglia is part of the high heel, down in the southeast. They get warm weather which yields ripe fruit which in turn makes for tasty red wines. Generally speaking, they represent some of the best value available from Italy.

Don't worry if you've never heard of the grapes. Take pleasure in discovering something new. Wines from Italy that don't break the bank.

* Bill Vance is a professional Sommelier and organizer of the World Wine & Food Expo. See this week's recommendation on page 21. He can be reached at bestbuywine@rogers.com.