4 Viti AIS

The Best Wines According to the Italian Sommelier Association

The main objective of the AIS is to "promote the understanding and responsible consumption of wines and other alcoholic beverages". The publication of a guide to Italian wine, developed and edited by a committee of expert sommeliers, satisfies this objective. Starting with the 2016 vintage, the Vitae guide was created, as a result of a long process of tasting and evaluating Italian wines from every region. The most interesting feature of this guide is the indication of the best wine productions, which are assigned a symbol according to this scale:

• 4 Vines / over 91 points / excellent stylistic and organoleptic profile
• 3-4 Vines / from 89 to 90 points / excellent profile at the brink of excellence
• 3 Vines / from 85 to 89 points / very good stylistic and organoleptic profile
• 2 Vines / from 80 to 84 points / good stylistic and organoleptic profile
• 1 Vines / from 75 to 79 points / fairly good stylistic and organoleptic profile

In order to paint a complete picture of the vast Italian panorama, more than 15,000 wines produced by around 2,000 wineries are presented each year. These are important and very significant numbers, achieved thanks to extensive study, discovery and tasting efforts.

The samples tasted are assessed on the basis of various parameters, which can be grouped into three different tasting phases: visual, smell and taste. The ones that, besides demonstrating consistency between the various stages of tasting, also revealed an excellent level of quality, respond perfectly to the parameter defined by the concept of harmony. According to this concept a tasting can be defined as: not very harmonious / fairly harmonious / harmonious. In the last case this is an excellence that deserves more than 91 points on the 100-point scale.

Since they are awarded by professional sommeliers, the prizes published in the guide are very authoritative and attract the interest of wine lovers and professionals. Every year thousands of producers anxiously await the previews and the release of the guide in order to discover which wine expressions have entered the podium of Italian excellence according to the Italian Sommeliers' Association, the most famous, historic and well-known association.

The Excellence of the 4 Viti AIS

The Vitae guide, published every year in the autumn, rewards wines from every Italian region, whether they are produced by large, prestigious wineries such as Cantina Antinori or by small, undiscovered producers. The appeal of the Italian wine scene is its variety, namely the different and alternating regions, terroirs, native grape varieties, microclimates and productions. Each Italian region is reviewed in the guide and each page is dedicated to a different producer, in alphabetical order. In addition to an introductory section dedicated to the presentation of the winery, the labels reviewed are given a rating, expressed with vine symbols, and are described in terms of their visual, olfactory and taste qualities, with a final food pairing suggestion.

It is not only the great stars such as Brunello di Montalcino, Amarone, Barolo or Franciacorta that can achieve the maximum score, but also lesser-known, more recent wines, such as: Primitivo di Manduria, Aglianico, Nero di Troia, Lambrusco, Teroldego and numerous others. In the 2019 edition, a Trebbiano Romagnolo wine was awarded for the first time, although it was once considered a minor variety and is now being re-evaluated. It has demonstrated that it can produce great white wines, if interpreted correctly and vinified in the best possible way. The guide does not limit itself to awarding excellence only with the Quattro Viti symbol, but also assigns three other symbols that have attracted great interest among wine enthusiasts:

• the Arrow symbol: wines with an intense emotional value that provoked love at the first sip.
• the Piggy Bank symbol: wines with an exemplary production value in relation to their price (i.e. good value for money).
• the Tastevin symbol: wines that have contributed to a productive change in their territory of origin, becoming reference models of undisputed value.