I've just spent a glorious week on Lake Garda in Northern Italy. I can now see why everyone who has visited any of the lakes has enthused about them. The mountains and lakeside villages are simply stunning and traveling around the lake by ferry is simply a wonderful way to travel. Turn up at a lakeside village for a typically wonderful unhurried lunch with a few glasses of wine, then hop on a ferry to go somewhere else for a bit of sightseeing with no worries about drinking and driving.
I tasted a number of grapes and wines I had never heard of – Groppello, Bianco di Custoza and San Martino del Battaglia to name but a few. And I also tried for the first time a Franciacorta which I was supposed to have studied for my Diploma unit 4 sparkling exam but never got around to. My verdict on the wines? Groppello DOC and Bardolino DOCG wines were light and fruity and perfect for summer drinking, the Lugana DOC also, with a number of these very well made. I'll do another post shortly on two producers I visited, Redaelli de Zinis and Guerrieri Rizzardi.
My trip confirmed how complicated Italian wine is with over 400 (or is it 1000?) grape varieties and a range of styles, DOCs and IGTs. We were based in Desenzano on the SW corner of Lake Garda which is in Lombardy region but just over the border from the Veneto region. However, try asking in Desenzano for a Bardolino (from Veneto) or when traveling through the Veneto region for a Groppello (from Lombardy) and we were met with a smile and offer only of local wine, that is wine from the region we were in. There is a huge amount of loyalty to the local wines with those from other adjacent regions almost seen as being foreign.
I took a number of wine related pictures which you can see by following this link.
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