“Who makes better wine? Europe or America?” (You sometimes hear the question as “Old World versus New World? Whose wine wins?”) I’d rather frame the issue as “What can we learn from each other in order to make better wine ourselves?” 

Chianti has grown up with us and, like some of us perhaps, gotten better with time. Sixty years ago, though popular, it was not always well made. Today’s Chianti is as good an Italian red as can be. Like any good wine, it resembles the place from which it comes, one of the most comely homes for the vine, the Tuscan countryside. 

To bank on a skilled grower and maker of chardonnay, who works in a less well-known region of Burgundy, is to place, to my way of thinking, as safe a bet on white wine as there is. You just need to know whom to seek out and where to look. 

Here's a tour of Austria's three major red wine grapes and the characteristics that define them. 

Each year, the three regions of Sicily, Puglia and Veneto vie for first place as producer of the largest amount of Italian wine. While, in any given year, Veneto may lose that contest to one of its southern kin, it’s no issue to name Italy’s top maker of DOC (or quality-legislated) wine. The winner is always Veneto—producer alone, of Italy’s 20 regions, of one-fifth of all Italian DOC wine. 

Port is the only wine to have been invented by mistake and political intrigue. Photo from Alice Kotlyarenko on unsplash

Northern Italy is an area felicitous for growing white wine grapes because of its cool climate and diversity of mineral-rich soils. 

Water and wine. Take a gander at the globe’s vineyards and you’ll note that many of them—certainly, a good passel of the higher quality ones—are located along riversides.

Distinct from other areas of Bordeaux, Graves [grahv] is prized for both red and white wines—the latter often as expensive as the former—although, on balance, the more renowned are the red wines.

No commune in the Médoc shares the allure of Pauillac. In it reside three of the fabled five First Growth châteaux of Bordeaux—Lafite Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild and Latour. No trio like them exists in the world, much less elsewhere in the region. Photo from Angell Guillèn on unsplash

The wines of Australia are like its people: straightforward, outgoing, exuberant.

Margaux has the distinction, among the Médoc’s six winemaking communes, of being both the largest in area and diverse in style.

This just in—Austria is not Germany.

Sicily and Sardinia (or Sicilia and Sardegna, in Italian) are, in turn, the largest and second-largest islands in the Mediterranean. Both, of course, are two of the 20 regions of Italy, although both are characterfully distinct from the mainland as a whole—and from each other.

Argentina makes outstanding wines with grapes that are far less successful elsewhere. Photo from Matt Bloch on unsplash

Pomerol, at a mere 2,000 acres in vine, is Bordeaux’s smallest red wine district, but it produces wines more highly sought-after than some of the most famous in all of Bordeaux. Photo from Elliot Paris on unsplash

Piedmont (in Italian, Piemonte) takes its name from the Latin roots for the words “foot” and “mountain,” in this case a vast rolling land that spreads out from its base at the Alps. Photo from Michael Heintz on unsplash

The Veneto produces alone, of Italy’s 20 regions, fully one-fourth of all Italian DOC and DOCG wine. Photo from Alberto Caliman on unsplash

Tuscany and its wines are as familiar to English-speaking folk as they are to the Tuscans themselves.

If you envision the whole of Bordeaux as an outstretched right hand, the Médoc would be the thumb. Photo from Pierre Ducher on unsplash