Wine guides 36 years later

Some are of the opinion that wine guides are, by now, useless, while others buy them year after year and don’t know what they would do without them. Like all things in the fragmented world, these guides are a niche product and no longer one for the mass public, nevertheless, they have a role in understanding quality wine.

I consider myself to be one of those most responsible in the world of wine guides considering the fact that the first guide I was responsible for came out in November 1987, in other words, 36 years ago. At the time, the guide represented an authentic communication revolution. Before this, there had been Luigi Veronelli’s Cataloghi Bolaffi which came out together with Le Cantine di Veronelli, which set the stage for what would be the Guida Oro (Golden Guide) from Veronelli Editore.

In our small way, the fledgling guide from Gambero Rosso and Arcigola sought to be a guide, an authentic adventure, which started from nothing and involved experimenting with blind tastings, organizing panels of tasters in various Italian regions and awarding prizes to the best wines with the rating system of “three glasses”, which I invented. After a few years, thanks also to a particularly brilliant sales strategy (I remember we sold 80,000 copies to the pharmaceutical company Sigma Tau, which gave them as Christmas presents to many Italian doctors), we became very well-known, so much so that we then came out with first a German edition and then an English one.

For better or worse, it was an efficient system that totally changed the way of approaching wine. After 24 editions and a quick experience at Bibenda in 2011, I decided to found DoctorWine, first as a website and then adding a guide, the Essential Guide to Italian Wine. The first edition was 2014 and was published by Mondadori, as was the second edition, after which we self-published it. The guide we are compiling at present will be the tenth edition.

A print guide in Italian and English may seem old school, to some, but this year it sold out. We printed some 10,000 copies, of which perhaps only a couple hundred remain unsold, which means it still has a place in this digital world, swarming with influencers and bloggers. For sure, it is not as influential as the guide was many years ago, when close to 100,000 copies were sold, but it clearly continues to work as an annual inquiry into the world of quality wine and thus still has a place.

Many people who are not by nature digital still love to consult a print guide and I believe this will be the case for years to come. And rather than ask what sense it makes, after almost four decades, to review the state of the best Italian wines, I believe this should be viewed as an opportunity. And the approach we have taken, looking at it as an annual analysis on a subject, accompanied by organoleptic descriptions and point ratings along with a host of information and even some small stories about wineries and producers, I believe is the best way to express what we are trying to do. And it would appear, all things considered, to still work well.

We then try to process all this material, which has become a very rich data base, into other, more specific publications. At the end of the month, in Naples, Rome and Milan, we will present “Wines for the Summer”, where the focus is on wines we tasted while preparing our Essential Guide but, since the guide is essential, did not make the cut for the guide, or at least many did not. These are wines that are interesting, in their own way, and not too expensive. We highlight these wines in this publication and will present some of them at the tastings we are organizing for the publication. We hope to see many of you there.

The link to reserve your place at the events is: https://shop.doctorwine.it/prodotti/eventi

In the top picture: Daniele Cernilli at center with Riccardo Viscardi deputy editor of the Essential Guide and Stefania Vinciguerra editor-in-chief.