ITALY IS “THE” WINE COUNTRY, SAYS TIM ATKIN. BUT THE BRITISH MASTER OF WINE AND WINE WRITER ALSO SAYS COMMUNICATION IS “A DISASTER. EVERYONE TAKES A DIFFERENT DIRECTION AND THE WEB DOESN’T OFFER THE RIGHT RESOURCES, BUT THERE IS GREAT POTENTIAL”…

“Communication in the Italian wine world is, for the most part, disastrous: everyone follows a different direction instead of learning to work together to promote Italian regions that have enormous potential”



Communication for Italian wine abroad? To be totally honest, I’d define it a disaster”, says Tim Atkin, Master of Wine and one of the most followed wine writers in England. He told Winenews: “communication is not consistent, for instance, in promoting Italian wine on an important market like London. Communication proceeds randomly, every man for himself, while I think Italy has great potential because-because it is very popular the world over, because many people go there on vacation, and because there is the whole world of new Italian wines to discover. People are already familiar with Chianti, Soave, Frascati, etc. There are new wine “stars”, especially in the South, plus all the various Barolo crus. But even on the web (a tool that is familiar to Atkin, underlined by the many awards his site www.timatkin.com has received), there is not much information from “official sources”.
Clearly, not everything is bad - there are some excellent examples: some regions are better publicized and communicate better than others, particularly Tuscany – for instance, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Brunello di Montalcino, Chianti Classico - and then the previews in Sicily and Piedmont, but I’d like to see a lot more promotional initiatives, better resources, especially for wine education on the web. I think Italy has an enormous amount of work to do in this field, if only someone would just start”. Right, but where do you start? “First of all by working together. I know it's not a very “Italian” way of doing things, but I think that promoting a region, as Italian, will also promote the brand of wine, because Italy is, like and even more than France, a “regional” nation: each territory has its own typical foods that are accompanied by typical local wines. So, I think that promoting each region and Italy in general as a wine and food tourist destination would guarantee a fantastic future. Plus, wine is produced in every region in Italy, unlike France, so Italy can easily promote itself as “The” wine Country”. Who are Italian wines real competitors, according to Atkin? We always say France, but are there other countries too? “To be quite honest, I think all countries are competitors. Italy has to realize that the most important thing is to not compete with itself: Tuscany thinks its competitors are the Piedmont region, Apulia thinks they are the Campania region, but that is not so. Italy can “sell itself” as a nation, and then compete with anyone”.