La guida definitiva ai vini italiani
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Vinum Index - IANN srl

The Wines

Italian wines are at the top of the excellence tree in terms of quality, quantity and cash flow. This is due to the extraordinary number of different grape varieties and wine styles that are produced in the Italian country,
During the last ten years our team closely monitored a panel of about 10,000 different wine bottles/labels - thus considering around 2,000 wine makers.

Expert's ratings

Every respectable national and International guide expresses its own wine rankings, thus judging wine quality. Even though perplexities about the effectiveness of these evaluations often emerged, our team has verified that the comparative analysis of these rank values can be precious to spot interesting features of the wines in the panel.

Wine's Quality

Does it make any sense to talk about the "absolute" quality of a wine? Which are the features of great wines? Different people have different valid ideas about this. From our experience, though, we learned that a great wine can tell many things about its character: the delightfulness of its fruit, the balance between its scents and taste, the affinity with its "terroir"... And again, a really good wine is unforgettable, be it complex or straightforward, elegant, noble, powerful, austere. If a wine shows any of these things, then we know that quality is there - a measure of how much the wine is pleasant!

The startup panel

To start with, Vinum Index panel is based on a subset of all Italian wine makers. We consider only those producers that satisfy at least one of the following conditions:
a) the maker has produced at least one wine which ranks more than 89/100 in at least one of our reference guides;
b) the maker has produced at least one wine which ranks more than 83/100 in at least three of our reference guides.
The permanence in the panel is guaranteed only for those makers that satisfy the above conditions in the time span considered.

The selection process

Starting form the panel described above - a database of about 10,000 bottles - Vinum Index selects 500/600 wines for the guide.
To do this a quite complex function is used, which considers the following parameters:
  1. yearly quality factor: is the mean value of the grades in all reference guides
  2. quality factor over a time period: is a function of the yearly quality factors taken for each year of the time-span, with decreasing incidence as we go backwards in time
  3. price tag: in Euro currency, which is the mean of the bottle's price as shown in the most important wine shops
  4. availabilty: which is a function of the number of bottles produced for a specific wine. Note that as e-commerce grows in the wine market, the relevance of this parameter will also increase.
  5. representativeness (of regions, wine type, grape variety): this factor takes into account the need to represent all regions with a proportional number of wines. Furthermore, Vinum Index selection tries to maximize the number of different wine types and interesting grape varieties.
A complete set of values is computed for each wine in our panel. In this way the relevant features that emerge form the panel (10,000 wines) are accurately mapped to the final selection (600 wines). Clearly we end up with a valid representation of wines for each Italian region, spanning between appellations (Docg, Doc) and other wine styles (Igt, Vdt), that are linked to prestigious terroirs and well known wine making traditions. Also, the different wine styles are considered during the selection process (red, white, sweet, sparkling, etc.), as well as the remarkable diversity of grapes, "assemblages" and techniques which are typical of the Italian way of wine making.

Vinum Index wines

At the end of the selection process our team double check the wines which will end up in Vinum Index.
These are wines which:
  • have very high rankings in all the reference guides + have won international prices;
  • achieve the same levels of quality year after year,
  • have an excellent price/quality ratio,
  • can effectively be found and purchased (over the internet, in wine shops and restaurants),
  • represent all the wealth of production of every Italian region,
  • span over the most interesting grape varieties used for quality wines,
  • include a sample of all best appellations (not just Barolos, Brunellos or SuperTuscans)
These wines are Vinum Index friends.

Top wines

Some of the wines in the guide are marked with the "TOP" symbol. These wines are an absolute point of reference at international level – in terms of their history and quality, and irrespective of their price/quality ratio and ease of availability. (Note: some TOP wines do have a good price/quality ratio!).

Other outstanding wines

In addition to those described down to the tiniest detail, the guide also contains a series of other excellent wines from the winemaking companies. These wines are not "full fledged" in our guide for different reasons: sometimes due to their price or availability (with respect to the other wines); sometimes simply because the wine maker produces too many great wines (and Vinum Index has a cap for the number of wines for a single wine maker).

Testing and tasting

All wines selected in the Vinum Index guide have been rigorously tasted by a member of the Vinum Index team. This tasting session enabled us to describe the positive features and the organoleptic characteristics of each wine. Furthermore, each bottle's record contains information about the aging potential, the wine making techniques, and interesting news about the wine and its producer.