With over 1,000 different grape varieties spanning 20 regions, Italian wine can be daunting. If you do manage keep track of which grapes from which regions you enjoy, rousing your rusty high school Italian to pronounce them can prove even more difficult.
But Jeremy Parzen has the answer: his Italian Grape Name and Appellation Pronunciation Project. Parzen, who holds a doctorate in Italian and writes the blog Do Bianchi, has asked his favorite Italian wine producers to record themselves pronouncing grapes from their regions. The result is an auditory dictionary that both solves the pronunciation problem and offers insight into this extensive wine country.
Parzen is expanding the project weekly, but it already includes such grapes as the perpetually difficult Aglianico:
Photo by VinoFamily
Video by Do Bianchi
