Looking for a good guide to italian wines

[SWISS_CHEF]

I use Le Guide Hachette des Vins to help guide me around France. Because it does a great job covering small producers that never export their wines I feel it keeps me well off the beaten track used by Robert Parker fans. What I am looking for is the Italian equivalent. Any suggestions?

[albiston]

I use Le Guide Hachette des Vins to help guide me around France. Because it does a great job covering small producers that never export their wines I feel it keeps me well off the beaten track used by Robert Parker fans. What I am looking for is the Italian equivalent. Any suggestions?

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There's three major wine guides in Italy:

-The Gambero Rosso-Slow Food Vini d'Italia guide. Probably the best known, published in Italian, German and English. The coverage is the most thorough of the lot with descriptions for over 2000 producers and their wines. It's definitely the most sold in Italy and the trend setter. It also has a number of hard critics, because of its supposed liking of international style wines.

-Veronelli is the oldest one, founded by Italian gourmet father-figuer Luigi Veronelli, who sadly died last year. Since his passing away there's been some expectation to see what will happen with the guide in the next edition (2006, Veronelli still helped in the 2005 one).

- Espresso is the newest one on the block (three years old I believe). I've heard very contrasting opinions on the guide and the general picture I could make is that while some regions are reported with care and knowledge, this is not always the case.

Other guides are bibenda (published by the Italian Sommelier Association), Luca Maroni's guide (Maroni is a sort of Italian wine guru obsessed with fruitiness of wines).

Hope this helps, I would go for the Gambero Rosso-Slow Food one and take the grades they give with a pinch of salt.

[SWISS_CHEF]

There's three major wine guides in Italy:

-The Gambero Rosso-Slow Food Vini d'Italia guide. Probably the best known, published in Italian, German and English. The coverage is the most thorough of the lot with descriptions for over 2000 producers and their wines. It's definitely the most sold in Italy and the trend setter. It also has a number of hard critics, because of its supposed liking of international style wines.

-Veronelli is the oldest one, founded by Italian gourmet father-figuer Luigi Veronelli, who sadly died last year. Since his passing away there's been some expectation to see what will happen with the guide in the next edition (2006, Veronelli still helped in the 2005 one).

- Espresso is the newest one on the block (three years old I believe). I've heard very contrasting opinions on the guide and the general picture I could make is that while some regions are reported with care and knowledge, this is not always the case.

Other guides are bibenda (published by the Italian Sommelier Association), Luca Maroni's guide (Maroni is a sort of Italian wine guru obsessed with fruitiness of wines).

Hope this helps, I would go for the Gambero Rosso-Slow Food one and take the grades they give with a pinch of salt.

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Perfect! Just what I needed! THANKS!