Every year Frederick Wildman & Sons, importers of some truly serious wines, lead a gang of Italian producers on an American grand tour showing off their wines to the trade and press. Last Tuesday there was a dinner at Landmark in Tribeca – nine wines, Landmark's fine modern American cuisine and some very congenial company made for a jolly evening.

Four wines stood out, and what's remarkable is all four come not from the celebrated, and expensive, regions of Piedmont and Tuscany – the latter now Italy's Napa Valley – but from less glamorous parts, the sorts of provinces that for millennia made peasant vino, plonk, that never made it further than the tavernas of the local berg, and for good reason.

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Source: http://www.forbes.com/