I am always a little wary when I hear someone say that Italy’s history of quality wine production is 'recent’. At a memorable lunch some years ago Maurizio Zanella, owner of Ca’ del Bosco, even put a figure on that: 50 years. And that amount of time was already quite generous, knowing that it was at the beginning of the 1980s when Zanella, on a trip to California together with Italy’s most revered wine critic at the time Luigi Veronelli, discovered the barrique. This was the ‘Shock of the New’, an eye-opening moment when both believed that this small barrel...