With a rich wine history that dates back at least 3,500 years, and perfect conditions for growing wine grapes, it’s no wonder Italy is one of the most exciting wine regions in the world. It is home to more than 350 authorized grape varieties across 20 wine regions.

The vast majority of grapes grown in Italy are autochthonous, meaning they are the result of natural cross-breeding or mutations that happened in Italy. But there are also many important non-native (sometimes referred to as “international”) grape varieties grown in Italy.

I’m honored to be hosting the the Italian Food, Wine and Travel (#ItalianFWT) group of food and wine bloggers theme for August 2022 – Italian Wines From Non-Native Grapes.

Here are some of the most important non-native grape varieties you’ll find in Italy:

• Chardonnay –  A French grape that spread throughout Italy in the 1980s. It’s popular for its use in sparkling wines.
• Sauvignon Blanc
• Riesling – A German grape that is mostly grown in Northern Italy.
• Cabernet Sauvignon – Introduced to the Piedmont region during the early nineteenth century. It now grows primarily in Tuscany.
• Merlot – A French grape that is the country’s third most popular variety. It grows in 14 of Italy’s 20 wine regions.
• Syrah – This French grape is relatively new to Italy, becoming popular in the 1990s.
• Pinot Noir – A French grape that has a long history in Italy.
• Primitivo (a transplant from neighboring Croatia)

For the avoidance of doubt, for this theme, we are looking for Italian wines that are made up of 100% (or at least 75%) of non-native grape varieties.

Join Us

How to join with a blog article: Send me an email (martindredmond@gmail.com) sharing your interest in participating. Please include blog url and title, Twitter handle, and any other social media details. For those in our Facebook group, post your details as a reply to the invitation post

Send your post title to me by Tuesday, August 2, 2022 by the end of day to be included in the preview post. Your title should include “#ItalianFWT” added to the end of the title.

Include links to the other #ItalianFWT participants in your post, and a description of the event. We’ll provide the HTML code you can easily put in your initial post, which will link to people’s general blog url.

Publish your post between Friday August 5th, 2022 and 8:00 a.m. PT on Saturday, August 6th.

Whether you post or not, we would love you to join our Twitter chat Saturday, August 6th, 2022 at 10am CDT using hashtag #ItalianFWT

Once all the posts are live, we will send updated code so you can update your article with the permanent links to everyone’s #ItalianFWT posts.

Get social! After the posts go live, please visit your fellow bloggers posts’ to comment and share. We have a Facebook group for participating bloggers to connect and share, too.

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