My Italian Grape Geek Journal

Italian Grape Geek Journal, your personal companion on the road towards mastering Italian wine, one grape at a time! You may have heard about the Italian Wine Ambassador certification program delivered by Vinitaly International Academy (VIA).

To date more than 1200 candidates have taken the course and 340 have been officially certified as an “Italian Wine Ambassador”. This program has become the gold standard for Italian wine training over the years, but it is tough, and the pass rate is something like 25% at first try.

What we’ve tried to do here is set the bar slightly lower – to provide a stimulating but achievable pathway for Italian wine enthusiasts to consolidate and sharpen up their technical knowledge and expertise – to become, if you like, an Italian Grape Geek! This is what we’ve come up with. With the help of a passionate community of Italian wine students and educators from around the world, we’ve developed a new set of learning resources, with this, your own personal learning journal, at its heart.

We know that there are already countless textbooks and online resources available about wine in general and Italian wine in particular (we’ve read them all, so you don’t have to!). But we wanted to give you something different: your own personal space to cultivate your learning experience and document your unique journey - no matter where you are on the road to mastering Italian wine.