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In Italy's Wine Regions, a Return to Tradition

The vineyards at Castelnuovo Berardenga, in Italy's Chianti region.
Sylvia Poggioli, NPR
The vineyards at Castelnuovo Berardenga, in Italy's Chianti region.
The Marino Wine Museum highlights Italy's wine heritage.
/ Sylvia Poggioli, NPR
/
Sylvia Poggioli, NPR
The Marino Wine Museum highlights Italy's wine heritage.

A sluggish international economy and growing competition from Australia, Latin America and the United States, is forcing Europeans to try to re-assert themselves on the world market.

Nowhere more so than in Italy, where the new trend is a return to tradition. With many Italian producers of international wines being priced out of the market, a reliance on time-tested methods -- and local grapes, instead of more trendy merlots and cabernets -- is creating new excitement and opportunity.

Some wine producers are reviving the concept of territory: a wine that comes from a specific vineyard, made year after year from native grapes: a synthesis of the soil, the climate and the farmer.

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Sylvia Poggioli is senior European correspondent for NPR's International Desk covering political, economic, and cultural news in Italy, the Vatican, Western Europe, and the Balkans. Poggioli's on-air reporting and analysis have encompassed the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the turbulent civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and how immigration has transformed European societies.