Don't Sound Like a Tool: How to Pronounce Italian Wines

By Jonathan Kauffman Tue., May 11 2010 at 4:50 PM

Categories: Audio

Don't Sound Like a Tool is SFoodie's series of audio pronunciation guides to sort-of-common-but-not-obvious words we keep encountering on wine lists and menus. No more shame, no more pointing, no more godawful imitations of a language you don't speak.

Remember Roberto Benigni? The Italian Jerry Lewis you loved in Night on Earth and loathed in Life Is Beautiful? The hyperactive actor who bunny-hopped up the stairs to accept his Oscar? Do you want to sound like him while mispronouncing "Verdicchio"? No? Then you'll want to listen to this week's Don't Sound Like a Tool.

dklimke/Flickr

BEAR-ell-o or Bah-RO-lo?

While Sangiovese is old hat, some of the other Italian wines that have trended high in the past five years ― not to mention grand old Barolo ― continue to baffle American tongues. SFoodie asked Wolfgang Weber, a San Francisco-based Italian wine expert who blogs at spume, to recite a list of wines and wine regions, sans musical Italian inflection (click to hear Weber's pronunciations):

Wines & Varietals
Nebbiolo
Montelpulciano
Barolo
Nero D'Avila
Aglianico
Negroamaro
Dolcetto
Tocai Friuliano
Arneis
Verdicchio
Vermentino

Regions
Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Campania
Calabria
Marche
Alto Adige

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