Is Barolo the Name of a Grape? Is Chianti the Name of a Place?

A wine label always carries a “name.” But what that name points to is not always one single thing. Some names refer to the place where the grapes were grown, some refer to the grape variety itself, and others refer to a particular method or style of winemaking.

This series, “Italian Wine Through Names and Places,” takes that puzzle of names as its starting point and travels through Italy’s wine regions from north to south. Someone who hears the name “Barolo” and knows it is the name of a village can naturally picture that village’s location and its grape variety as well. Knowing a name is also a way of gaining a map.

Three Kinds of Names

The names that appear on Italian wine labels can be broadly divided into three types.

Place Names (Appellation Names) This is a name that refers to the very village or area where the grapes were grown. As with Barolo and Barbaresco, it is not uncommon for the wine’s name and the village’s name to be the same.

Grape Variety Names This is when the name written on the label refers to the grape variety used itself. As with Primitivo and Nero d’Avola, the variety name becomes the wine’s name as it is.

Production Method / Style Names There are also names that refer to a specific winemaking method or style. Amarone is a representative example: it functions not only as a place name but also as a term describing the style produced by a particular method of production.

Applying this three-way classification to the ten themes covered in the first phase gives the following.

Reading the Ten Themes

From Veneto in the north to Sicily in the south — these are stories that revolve around ten names. Pages for all ten themes are now published.

1. Prosecco — A fork in the road for a grape variety name, explained as having happened to protect the place name “Prosecco.”
2. Barolo — A grape said to carry the name of fog, and Barolo, the name of its village.
3. Amarone — A dry-wine lineage reported to have been born from the sweet wine “Recioto.”
4. Franciacorta — In a land considered to have once been the name of a tax-exempt territory in the Middle Ages, only the bubbles inside the bottle quietly mark the passage of time.
5. Chianti Classico — The legend told by a black rooster, and the meaning of the word “Classico.”
6. Brunello di Montalcino — The moment a name was born, as told by a bottle from 1888 still kept in one family’s cellar.
7. Bolgheri — The path a wine born outside the official system took to become a recognized appellation.
8. Barbaresco — The village’s history of cooperation has shaped a face different from neighboring Barolo.
9. Primitivo — The story of a grape named for early ripening, found to be genetically identical to a variety across the sea.
10. Nero d’Avola — Behind the name “the black grape of Avola” lies the origin of another name it goes by.