Italian's Insight to Travel Italy: Pinot Grigio delle Venezie DiFlora 2006 IGT Whole Foods

The dollar falls resulting in higher prices for European goods. My favorite wines are caught up in this mess. Most domestic wines do not do it for me and I do not want to give up my bottle of wine at the dinner table. Whenever wine is missing it just seems wrong. The more famous Italian white wines available in our local market are too “pushed”. The acidity is too high or they tend to have an underlying sweet base. I like my Pinot Grigio dry and clean. As I have seen MezzaCorona slide higher I have been looking for a substitution. Raffaella and I were shopping at our local Whole Foods and we had a pleasant surprise.

A Pinot Grigio delle Venezie, private lable, was sitting anonymously in the cooled wine section. It was $10 for a 1.5 liter bottle. DiFlora, a name that we had never heard of but if you do not try new things you will not find that great value of an unknown product. Once everyone knows about it invariably the price will rise. I bought two bottles. Raffaella prepared Risotto with Asparagus and Scampi. This would be the perfect chance to try this wine.

DiFlora Pinot Grigio delle Venezie 2006 IGT, a Whole Foods private lable, is a clean, dry Pinot Grigio. It has a mild bouquet of peaches and mature pears. On the palate this wine tends toward mature yellow peaches and has a clean finish. Amazingly the acidity found in most low cost Pinot Grigio is missing. There is just enough bite to clean the palate. I also have what I call the morning after test. Many wines are hard to digest. You can still taste the worst parts of the wine the morning after or your head is in a slight state of confusion. My friend, John the Baptist of Italian wines, says I may have an intolerance of complex sugars found in many “forced” wines. No matter what the reason my morning after test tells me whether or not a wine is produced by traditional or contemporary methods.

This is a great wine for the price. It is the perfect solution both as an aperitif and with light meals. The alcohol content clocks in at 12% so be careful when drinking this chilled wine on warm summer nights. This wine goes down so smooth that you may not realize when you have had too much to drink.