A Window Opens to the Hidden Treasures of Italian Wine
On May 24, 2025, a truly remarkable wine event took place at the Pullman Hotel in Shanghai: the VINO100 / Ian D’Agata Selected Italian Wines 2025 with over fifty high-quality wines directly selected by Ian D’Agata for an award. The event was curated and hosted by world-renowned wine authority Ian D’Agata, a week-long Italian Wine Week culminating in the Saturday VINO100 wine show and six prestigious masterclasses. The event brought together a carefully chosen selection of Italy’s finest estates with the goal of presenting Italian wine through its most authentic dimensions — terroir, culture, and people.
This year’s edition featured 52 top wineries from across twenty Italian regions, showcasing over 500 wines. More than a tasting, it was a cultural dialogue — a multidimensional portrait of Italy’s viticultural identity.
A Panoramic Wine Map of Italy
The lineup of wines and wineries was nothing short of extraordinary. From Piedmont’s legendary Cogno, Gaja, Marchesi di Barolo, and G.D. Vajra, to Tuscany’s Antinori, Tenuta San Guido, Tua Rita, Argiano, and Trinoro, the show also included the volcanic depths and heights of Sicily (Planeta, Benanti), the historic elegance of Campania (Di Meo), the remarkable elegance of the Abruzzo wines of Tiberio and Valle Reale, the alpine clarity of Alto Adige (Cantina Bozen), the sunlit warmth and marine minerality of Sardinia (Santadi) and many, many more wineries, it was a wonderful opportunity to pour their high-quality wines and leave local wine professionals and lovers extremely impressed and happy.
The show was a walk-through Italy’s landscapes — north to south, classic to contemporary — and a rare opportunity to discover wines not often seen in China, made that much more remarkable and useful because the vast majority of the producers themselves (winery owners, winemakers and/or export managers) were all on hand to pour and explain the wines.
An Immersive Tasting Experience — and a Shift in Perception
The 500+ wines poured throughout the day offered not only a chance to taste but to understand. Behind each bottle was a place, a philosophy, a grape, and a story.
Perhaps most exciting was the clear rise in interest for Italian white wines, at least here in Shanghai— a welcome shift in perception. For years, the Chinese market has mostly associated Italian wine with a handful of red icons. But this year, guests repeatedly asked about:
• Trebbiano d’Abruzzo from Abruzzo
• Fiano and Greco wines from Campania
• Timorasso wines from Piedmont
• Vermentino wines from Tuscany and Sardinia
• A range of mineral-driven whites from the “hidden gem” region of Alto Adige
It felt like a curtain had been lifted — a window opened — revealing a side of Italy that had long been underappreciated. The richness, freshness, and varietal expression of these white wines captured the curiosity of both professionals and enthusiasts alike.
The Prestige Masterclass Program Highlights — Linking Terroir and Time
Six sold-out masterclasses were held throughout the day (Saturday, May 24), each hosted by Ian D’Agata with the winery owner, CEO and winemaker present, and focused on vertical tastings from estates: Cogno, Comaroto and Trabucchi, Tenuta San Guido, Tua Rita, Argiano, and Tenuta di Trinoro. These sessions provided not just depth, but structure — teaching guests how to approach Italian wine through vintage, terroir, and typicity. Furthermore, two more prestige masterclasses were also organized in the week following VINO100, one featuring the great wines of Gaja and another featuring the wines of Antinori’s Guado al Tasso, bothwith Ian D’Agata guiding the tasting.
One of the most remarkable masterclass tasting sessions was:
Cogno’s Barolo Riserva Ravera Vigna Elena Vertical Tasting
For the first time ever in Asia, guests experienced a vertical of this rare Barolo, made entirely from 100% Nebbiolo Rosé — a genetically distinct and near-extinct variety. Hosted by Valter Fissore with Ian D’Agata, vintages from 2004 to 2019 were poured, offering a clear look at the site’s aging potential and expressive purity.
“It was an honour and a privilege to host this Asia premiere tasting,” Ian noted, for “…Only a few producers have much Nebbiolo Rosé left.”
The 2004 sang with vibrancy. The 2016 and 2019 are destined for greatness, both 100 point wines. It was a masterclass not only in winemaking — but in heritage, genetic diversity, and precision viticulture. (Read the Ian D’Agata Wine Review for full reports on every single masterclass, full tasting notes and scores. These will be published over the course of the next one and a half months.)
Between People and Wine: Ian’s Closing Words
After the event, Ian D’Agata shared a heartfelt message: “Thirty years of seeing each other, knowing each other, listening, learning… It’s been nothing but great, rewarding and enriching.”
The sentiment echoed throughout the hall that day. VINO100 was not just about showcasing wine. It was about the decades of trust, friendship, and shared discovery between Italy’s wine families and Ian, universally recognized and appreciated as the world’s leading wine writing authority on Italian wines, now brought into the Chinese cultural sphere.
A Cultural Recalibration for Italian Wine
VINO100 is not just a wine show — it is a recalibration of how Italian wine is presented, understood, and celebrated in China.
It gave visibility not only to the “usual suspects” — Super Tuscans and Barolo giants — but also to Italy’s lesser-known treasures: indigenous grapes, micro-regions, and rare stylistic expressions, something that Ian has strived hard to highlight with his incessant work on behalf of Italian wine overt he course of the last thirty years.
For consumers, it was a journey of new understanding.
For the trade, it was a moment of realignment.
And for Italian wine as a whole, it was a bold, confident step into a broader conversation, one that will inevitably pay long term dividends thanks to better knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the fascinating but unfortunately complex world that is quality Italian wine.
