Gambero Rosso and Slow Food Editore Announce Celebration Of 20th Anniversary of "Italian Wines" Guide

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Gambero Rosso and Slow Food present the 20th Anniversary Edition of Italian Wines, the annual guide to the Italian wine marketplace, at San Francisco’s Fort Mason center on Wednesday, March 21, 2007. The event, which is by invitation only, kicks off at 3:00PM with a press preview.

This year marks the first time the guide includes the Award for Sustainable Viticulture. In addition, this anniversary edition includes 25 Retrospective Three Glasses awards for great wines that have shown over the years to deserve this prestigious recognition.

The Tre Bicchieri® event, generally considered the most important North American presentation of premium Italian wines, will showcase 127 producers in San Francisco. Event sponsors include the Region of Sicily, Maschio Bonaventura, Grana Padano, San Daniele, Bormioli, and San Pellegrino - Acqua Panna. A sister event with 156 wine producers will take place in New York City, at the Puck Building, on March 19th.

Italian Wines 2007 is the tenth English language edition of Vini d’Italia, now in its twentieth year of publication. This landmark guide is an indispensable volume for all wine drinkers. “We are celebrating with a record-breaking edition of more than 1,000 pages, reviewing 2,206 wineries and 16,000 wines, extraordinary numbers for this or any other wine guide,” says Daniele Cernilli of Gambero Rosso, one of the chief editors of Italian Wines, along with Gigi Piumatti of Slow Food.

More than 130 tasters worked for months, assessing masked samples from all over the country before finalizing their evaluations. Many public and private institutions helped along the way. Each wine was ranked in categories ranging from simple honorable mention all the way to the highest award, the renowned Tre Bicchieri® (Three Glasses). This last distinction was shared by 282 wines. Distribution by region was as follows: Tuscany, with 55 awards, was first followed by Piedmont with 53. Next was Friuli Venezia Giulia with 29 Three Glasses, Veneto with 24, and Alto Adige with 23. Sicily won 15 awards, Campania 13, and Marche 12. Among the other regions, Lombardy had 10 top labels, Abruzzo 9, Trentino and Emilia Romagna 7 each, Umbria 6, Puglia 5 and Sardinia 4. Valle d’Aosta received 3 top awards, Lazio and Basilicata 2 each, Molise and Calabria 1.

The Guide also gave Special Awards to the year’s outstanding winemakers and wineries.

Best Bubbles: Franciacorta Saten ’02, by Gatti
Best White Wine: Cupo ’05, by Pietracupa
Best Red Wine: Brunello di Montalcino ’01, by Cerbaiona
Best Sweet Wine: AA Moscato Giallo Passito Serenade ’03, by Cantina
Viticoltori di Caldaro
Winery of the Year: Benanti
Winemaker of the Year: Casimiro Maule
Up-and-Coming Winery: Villa Medoro
Outstanding Grape-Grower: Josko Gravner
Best Priced Wine: Soave Classico Monte Fiorentine ’05, by Ca’ Rugate
Award for Sustainable Agriculture: Peter Pliger
“Our 20th Anniversary Edition of Italian Wines is a testament to the tradition and popularity of Italian wine culture that continues to be celebrated throughout the world,” says Gigi Piumatti. “This showcase of Italian wine producers brings authentic native Italian food and wine culture to the US in a way many of our readers and the general public would only be able to experience by visiting Italy,” he says.
About Gambero Rosso:

Gambero Rosso (www.gamberorosso.it) is a well-known trademark all over the world. It is a complex structure, articulated in diverse activities but all centered on the same theme: the search for quality in food and wine, as an expression of the Italian way of life and of Italian national and local cultures. Diverse activities include but not limited to publishing, broadcast channels, and culinary arts schools and programs.

About Slow Food:

Founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986, Slow Food (www.slowfood.com) is an international association that promotes food and wine culture, but also defends food and agricultural biodiversity worldwide. It opposes the standardization of taste, defends the need for consumer information, protects cultural identities tied to food and gastronomic traditions, safeguards foods and cultivation and processing techniques inherited from tradition and defends domestic and wild animal and vegetable species.