Trying to keep up with the ever changing world of Italian wine can make your head spin. I'm a huge fan of Italian wine but trying to properly inform our staff and guests can be a daunting task.

Last week I was asked why some Italian wines had a paper strip on the neck of the bottle and others did not. I stumbled a bit to compose a concise explanation and then came to the realization that there was no short answer. Italian wine and its laws are confusing!

Basically you have four classifications: VdT, IGT, DOC and DOCG. VdT stands for Vino da Tavola, or table wine, and is usually consumed in local Italian trattoria. IGT stands for Indicazione Geografica Tipica. As the name suggests, wine typical of a geographic region. DOC or Denominazione di Origine Controllata (try saying that 3 times quickly) is a wine produced in a specific well-defined region in Italy. And finally DOCG, the highest wine classification in Italy. The "G" stands for Garantita, a wine guaranteed to follow stringent wine making rules. It's here where you find some of Italy's top wines.

But what about the question concerning the paper strips on the neck of the bottle? I turned to our Italian importer extraordinaire Nadia Galati for more insight. Nadia explained to me that back in the 1980s, Italian wines started being more closely regulated. Originally only Chianti, Vernaccia and Brunello had the strips, or fascetta in Italian, on the bottles. Today all DOCG wines are required to wear the strips. The DOCG strips are supplied by the state. As for DOC wines, it's up to the regional consortium but in the near future all consortium will require the fascetta.
The fascetta is much more than a cosmetic strip.They are all numbered so that at any time they can track the number of bottles produced and any other historical facts needed. The fascetta has to be requested and paid for (a tax) when the producer bottles the wine.

Personally I often find myself scratching my head trying to figure out the latest changes in Italian wine law. My suggestion is to ignore the regulations and just enjoy the wines.