The world of Italian wine sometimes seems like a jungle, with all manner of strange vine varieties hanging from branches, a mass of laws and regulations lurking like thick undergrowth, just waiting to trip up the unsuspecting student. Barolo to Valpolicella, the first of two volumes about the wines of Italy, attempts to sort out the wood from the trees in this most complex and fascinating of wine lands. Using the many local and international grape varieties as signposts, the author leads us through the mysteries of Northern Italian viniculture - from Mont Blanc to the Slovenian border, from the Swiss-Italian Alps to the Apennine foothills. Have the Italians got it in them to take centre stage among the wines of the world in the twenty-first century? Nicolas Belfrage puts the case, and provides a base from which readers may form an opinion for themselves.