27
DECEMBER 1 2008
AMERICANWAY
Divino is the answer tomy prayer I do not
think is a coincidence.
But, then, I’ve been drinking a lot of
wine. This ismy purpose inRome: to visit
as many of the city’s wine bars as I can in
just a fewdays’ time and tofindoutwhat it
is that sets these establishments apart from
the average U.S. wine bar. At the heart,
it’s to discover what it is that makes them
Roman.
As it turnsout,whatmakes themRoman
is that the wines are mostly not Roman.
Though there’s good wine made in Lazio
— a region in central ItalywithRome at its
center, theMediterranean Sea to the west,
Tuscany to the north, and Campania to
the south—Rome’s wine bars don’t favor
the local grapes. Instead, they stock wines
from all over Italy, from the northernmost
region, Alto Adige, all the way to Sicily.
From anAmerican perspective, that might
not soundodd—winebars are supposed to
have a range of offerings— but in Italy, it’s
downrightweird.
“InRome, you get a panorama of Italian
wines,which youdon’t get anywhere else in
Italy,” saysDavidLynch, anotedU.S. expert
on Italianwines. Lynch is coauthor of
Vino
Italiano
, an encyclopedia of sorts on Italy’s
wines and winemakers, and I’ve brought
the slim companion book,
Vino Italiano
BuyingGuide
, toRome for referencingmy
newdiscoveries.
Lynch calls the typical Italianwine bar’s
approach “hyper-regional,” meaning that a
winebar in, say,Naples typically sellswines
only from the Campania region, of which
Naples is the capital. “If you go to a wine
bar in Florence, the offerings are going to
be all Tuscanwines,” he says. “And if yougo
to a wine bar in Alba, it is going to be all
Barbaresco and other Piedmontese wines.
Rome isn’t like that.”
Put another way: Only in Rome’s wine
barswill youfind thebest Italianwines.
All
thebest Italianwines.
L’Angolo Divino
(Via dei Balestrari, 12;
011-39-06-686-4413)
isacase inpoint.The
humming bar/restaurant stocks hundreds
of wines from all over Italy, from the fin-
est Barolo to the simplest Montepulciano
d’Abruzzo. Blond wood shelves anchored
to red brick walls display much of the
stock here. And in the center of the space,
a glass case holds cured meats, wheels of
L’Antica
Enoteca
L’AngoloDivino
