“A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine.” – Italian proverb

The history of wine in Italy is as old as the culture itself. Its popularity is evident not only in its ubiquity at social events and family gatherings but also in the nearly endless wine-based proverbs in Italian and its various dialects.

A breakdown of Italian wine by the numbers:

48.9 million: hectoliters, harvested in 2015. The most of any country in the world.
20: regions. Each with its own unique character and flavors.
361: indigenous grape varietals catalogued by Italy’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and that’s not counting all of the clones of clones and their clones (Attilio Scienza, a renowned professor of enology in Milan, claims there are over 800).
329: DOC (short for Denominazione Origine Controllata or “Controlled Designation of Origin”) regions of Italy. This classification system was modeled after the French AOC and implemented in 1963 to ensure quality control in the making of traditional Italian wine.
74: DOCG, or Denominazione Origine Controllata e Garantita and the highest Italian wine classification, regions of Italy. Piedmont, Veneto and Tuscany boast the most per region.