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"Italy is not complicated, it's complex." That's what they told us on the first day of the Italian Wine Specialist Certification Course. That is an understatement. Wine is produced in...

The Tre Bicchieri World Tour came to San Francisco to showcase the 2012 Tre Bicchieri winners, the top-rated Italian wines of the past year.  Organized by Gambero Rosso, which began in 1986, more than 20,000 wines were tasted by the panels, who awarded one, two, or three "Bicchieri" (or "glasses") to wines of exceptional character and quality.  This year every style of Italian wine and every region was represented among the 375 that received the highest rating of Tre Bicchieri (three glasses). As I typically organize events of this kind, I rarely have the opportunity to spend the entire afternoon tasting and learning and not running around keeping everything organized.  Walking into a room with more than 130 producers (and 300+ wines) can be rather overwhelming.  Where do you start?  Should you taste by varietal?  by region?  all whites and then reds?  By the time you figure out how you are going to approach the tasting, you have lost valuable tasting time.  Luckily, I had the great pleasure to taste the wines alongside Master Sommelier Andrea Immer Robinson, wine educator and author of books such as Great Wine Made Simple. Andrea recommends jumping back and forth between varietals, styles and regions so that your palate doesn't get fatigued quickly.  With her guidance, we tasted through more than half the tasting in just over two hours.
Located in the Northeast of Italy is the Veneto Region, famous for the canals of Venice, the architecture of Palladio and the home of Romeo and Juliet. Comprised of seven provinces, five of them produce wine: Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso and Venice. The Veneto Region is also responsible for producing 20% of all Italian D.O.C. wines. In fact, there are a total of 25 D.O.C. wines and 11 D.O.C.G. wines from within the Veneto region.

In the very eastern part of Venice, near Treviso, is the area of Lison-Pramaggiore. With flat, alluvial lands, two of native varietals are Lison and Refosco dal penduncolo rosso.

Lison is a new wine made from the ancient varietal Tocai Italico (also known as Tocai Friulano). In 2007, the European community agreed that the name Tocai belonged to the Hungarians. Therefore, the Italians renamed the wine Lison. Made with 100% French Sauvignonasse (an ancient grape), Lison (formerly Tocai) is a straw yellow wine that is delicate and acidic with a finish of bitter almonds.

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