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Italian Wine Guide: Pinot Grigio, Chianti and Prosecco

By Tom Bell
Italian Wine Guide

Italy makes more wine than any other country on earth, and grows more indigenous grape varieties than anywhere else. That is what makes it rewarding, and it is also what makes it confusing.

Here is what actually matters, starting with the reds. Everything covered is in our Italian wine collection if you would rather skip ahead.

Italian wine in numbers

Italy produced roughly 44 million hectolitres of wine in 2024 from 728,000 hectares of vineyard, reclaiming its position as the world's largest producer after a poor 2023 harvest handed the title briefly to France.

The numbers behind the complexity: 78 DOCG appellations, over 330 DOCs and more than 120 IGTs, with north of 500 indigenous grape varieties in commercial production. That is more native varieties than France, Spain and Greece combined.

Wine is made in all 20 regions, from Alto Adige in the Alps down to Pantelleria, which sits closer to Tunisia than to Sicily. No other country grows so many varieties across so wide a range of climates, which is exactly why Italian wine feels harder to navigate than French or Spanish.

The International Organisation of Vine and Wine publishes the production figures each year, and Italy and France have traded the top spot repeatedly over the past decade.

Italian red wine

Italy is a red wine country at heart. Roughly two thirds of what it produces is red, and the reds are what the country is known for internationally.

The defining characteristic of Italian red wine is acidity. Italian reds are built for the dinner table rather than for sipping on their own, which is why they cut through tomato sauce, cured meat and hard cheese so well and why they can taste austere without food. If you've ever found a Chianti sharp on its own and brilliant with a bowl of ragù, that's the reason.

Sangiovese

Sangiovese is Italy's most planted red grape and the one to understand first. It's the backbone of Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, and it turns up across central and southern Italy under different names.

Expect sour red cherry, dried herbs, a savoury earthiness and firm acidity with medium tannin. It's rarely a heavy wine, but it has grip.

Where it grows changes it noticeably. Tuscan Sangiovese is leaner and more herbal. Southern Sangiovese from Puglia is riper and rounder, with darker fruit and softer edges.

Corvina and the Veneto

Corvina is the main grape of Valpolicella in the Veneto, and it's the other Italian red worth knowing. Lighter than Sangiovese, with sour cherry and almond notes, and it's the base for Amarone when the grapes are dried before pressing.

Nebbiolo, Barolo and Barbaresco

Nebbiolo is the grape behind Barolo and Barbaresco in Piedmont, and it's Italy's most prestigious red. Pale in the glass but powerfully tannic, with tar, rose and dried cherry. It's an expensive, long-ageing style rather than an everyday bottle, but worth knowing if you're working through Italian wine seriously.

Reading an Italian wine label

Four terms do most of the work:

  • DOCG: the top tier, with the strictest rules on grape, yield and ageing
  • DOC: one level down, still tightly regulated by region
  • IGT: looser regional rules, which lets producers experiment. Often excellent value
  • Riserva: longer ageing than the standard bottling of the same wine

Italian reds to try

  • Ancora Sangiovese IGT Puglia: 86 kcal, 12.5% ABV. Southern Sangiovese from Puglia. Fresh red and blackberry fruit with a hint of spice, medium-bodied and dry. Vegan and gluten-free. Made for spaghetti bolognese or mushroom risotto.
  • Il Caggio Chianti: 91 kcal, 13% ABV. Classic Tuscan Chianti and the benchmark style. Sour red cherry with leafy aromas and an earthy smokiness. Rated 4.7 out of 5 by customers, several of whom drink it slightly chilled.
  • Wild Nature Organic Corvina Merlot: 92 kcal, 13% ABV. Veneto Rosso built on Corvina, the Valpolicella grape, blended with Merlot for weight. Certified organic.

Browse all red wine

Italian white wine

The whites come mainly from the north east, where cooler Alpine air keeps acidity high and the wines lean and mineral.

Pinot Grigio is the export star and the most misunderstood wine in Britain. The cheap stuff is thin and forgettable, which has given the grape a poor reputation. Done properly, from Delle Venezie, Friuli or Alto Adige, it's crisp and precise with green apple, pear and citrus, and a saline edge.

Also worth seeking out: Verdicchio from the Marche, Soave from the Veneto, and Gavi from Piedmont.

Our Pinot Grigio collection is drawn almost entirely from Delle Venezie, Friuli and Lombardy, and it is where the lightest wines in the whole range sit.

Italian whites to try

Browse all white wine

Prosecco

Prosecco is made from Glera grapes in the Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia. Unlike Champagne, the second fermentation happens in a pressurised tank rather than the bottle, which is the Charmat method. That's what keeps Prosecco fresh, floral and fruit-forward instead of toasty.

Two things to check on the label.

DOCG means Conegliano Valdobbiadene or Asolo, the hillside heartland, and it's a real step up from the broader DOC.

The sweetness term matters more than most people realise. Sugar is added back after fermentation in a step called dosage, and how much goes in decides the classification. The scale runs Brut Nature, Extra Brut, Brut, Extra Dry, Dry, Demi-Sec, from driest to sweetest, so Extra Dry sits fourth on that list rather than second.

Extra Dry is the most common style on UK supermarket shelves, which means a great many people are drinking the off-dry version thinking they chose the dry one. A glass of Brut carries roughly 0.4 to 1.5g of sugar. We have set the classifications out properly in our guide to sugar in prosecco.

Prosecco to try

Every bottle in our Prosecco and sparkling collection is a dry style at 0g sugar.

What to eat with Italian wine

Italian wine is designed around food, so pairing it is easier than most.

  • Sangiovese and Chianti: tomato-based pasta, pizza, grilled meat, aged pecorino
  • Corvina and Valpolicella: charcuterie, risotto, roast chicken. Fine slightly chilled
  • Pinot Grigio: seafood, light pasta, salads, anything with lemon
  • Prosecco: aperitivo, salty snacks, prosciutto and melon

Italian wine and calories

Calories in wine come almost entirely from alcohol at 7 per gram, with residual sugar adding 4. As the NHS sets out, that puts alcohol closer to fat than to carbohydrate, which is why the ABV on the label predicts the calorie count better than the grape does.

Italy does well on this by accident of style. Northern Italian whites are picked early to hold acidity, so Pinot Grigio commonly finishes at 11 to 12% rather than the 13% typical of warmer regions. Prosecco sits at 11 to 11.5% for the same reason. Both come in lighter than their equivalents elsewhere without anything being taken out.

Drinkaware estimates that for adults who drink regularly, close to 9% of daily calorie intake comes from alcohol, which is a larger share than most people would guess.

More on how this works across the range in our guides to calories in a glass of wine and calories in white wine.

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