The Essential Guide Number Nine

The 2023 edition of the Essential Guide to Italian Wine will be presented in Milan on September 24 and 25 and then again in Rome on October 9. This guide is not just an evaluation of wines but also a book with little stories of places, people, tastings and encounters.

We will present the 9^th edition of DoctorWine’s Essential Guide to Italian Wine at the Principe di Savoia Hotel in Milan, on September 24 and 25. On Saturday, the 24^th, we will stage our awards ceremony that will be followed by tastings and seminars for the remainder of the event. We will then present the guide in Rome on October 9.

Starting tomorrow we will begin to publish the names of the wines that this year received a DoctorWine “seal”, given to wines that had ratings between 95 to 97/100. Those with a rating of 98/100 receive two “seals” while three “seals” are given to those very few, just 14, which received ratings of 99 and 100/100.

The Guide is an inquiry, an authentic investigation of thousands of Italian wines of which only a part, around a third of those tasted, were included in the guide. Thus you will find 3,150 wines from 1,256 wineries, a very strict selection carried out by some 20 particularly expert collaborators. I oversaw the whole operation, Riccardo Viscardi was my right hand, Stefania Vinciguerra the managing editor and Iolanda Maggio the editorial secretary. Other collaborators included Antonella Amodio, Sissi Baratella and Dario Cappelloni, along with many others who are listed in the book’s introduction and colophon.

For me, this is my 34^th time I have taken part in the compilation of a wine guide, having begun in 1987, serving in various roles and for three different publications during these years. At the beginning, and for the next 24 years, this was for Gambero Rosso, then for a year, in 2012, for Bibenda, and then, since 2015, for DoctorWine. And this will be the 34^th time that I will take the stage and try to explain what we have come up with this time.

What I would like to underscore, and which I have, in part, already done, is that this is an inquiry into the state of Italian wine. It involved tasting many wines, obviously, but also speaking with producers and enologists, visiting wineries, the headquarters of producer associations, taking part in preview tastings, in Vinitaly in Verona and many debates and meetings. The result is what you can read in a few days’ time and I hope it will be interesting, not just for the ratings but also and above all for the reviews of the wines, for the information given on the wineries and winemakers and for the many novelties, in regard to the discovery of new wineries and new wines, which the guide offers. In other words, ours is not just a wine guide but also a book with little stories about places, people, tastings and encounters.