For months I have been struggling with how much “bad” wine there is in Italy, and how much people defend it with national pride.

Don’t get me wrong, there is incredible wine in Italy, maybe even the best wines in the world; but 99% of the wine in Italy is drank out of a glass jug filled in the trunk of your car at the winery through a garden hose.  It is THE substitute for drinking water or soda or milk with your meal.  In the USA we often drink ice tea or water or soda or milk with our meals, in Italy you drink “daily” wine.  And 60 million people drink a lot of daily wine.  And have been drinking it since they were small children.  The FUNCTION (or purpose) of 99% of the wine in Italy is not to enhance the meal, but to be the liquid part of it.

There are a significant number of people in Italy who have not drank wine out of a bottle for years, yet they drink wine every day.  You go to the winery each week, fill your jugs with enough wine for the week, stick a stopper in it, and you are “good-to-go” for another week.  And if you do buy your wine at the grocery store, it’s cheap Italian wine which costs between $5 and $10 a bottle.  The US equivalent of box wine, or jug wine.