WTI Magazine #50    2014 December, 26
Author : Jennifer Gentile Martin      Translation by:

Just like the United States has every state producing wine, so does Italy with wine regions. Today we're going to cover the Lazio region, also known as Latium. Without knowing it most of you will be familiar with it or have even been to it as it houses the capital of Italy, Roma.

A lot of the wine in the Lazio region is white and is made mostly from the trebbiano or malvasia grapes. There are 25 DOC wine regions within Lazio. One of the DOC regions you may have heard of or have tried yourself is Frascati, but not many of the wines from this region will pop into your mind firsthand when you think of Italian wines.

Most of the wines in this region can be found around the Alban Hills, which are located south of Rome. According to Vino Italiano, 80% of all the wine in the DOC wine regions of Lazio are produced here. The elevations are higher and the volcanic soil is well drained.

Although this area produces mostly whites it does have an indigenous red to the area known as cesanese, but outside of that you will find your international varieties like merlot and cabernet sauvignon and some of the other red grapes produced within Italy.

There originally was 1 region that was granted the DOCG designation, Cesanese di Piglio from the Piglio region, then in 2011 two more regions joined in, Frascati Superiore and Cannellino di Frascati.

One of the most interesting names for a DOC wine region resides in Lazio named Est! Est! Est! Di Montefiascone, or also just known as Est! Est! Est! It translates in latin to "it is". The story is that a German bishop was en route to watch the coronation of Henry V and sent his scout ahead of him to mark the places that had the best wine with est!.

Upon his arrival in Montefiascone he was overly impressed so he marked the door with Est! Est! Est! The story may be more entertaining than the wine is known for though.