The annual migration is currently in full bloom. As ducks, geese and monarch butterflies head north, another great migration is occurring. Italian wines are heading for our shores at top speed. It has been a long time since Italian wines were in vogue. Their time was the 1960s when Chianti was king. Every bistro, pizzeria and college dorm room had the ever-present, straw-covered Chianti bottle as a candle holder, resplendent with multicolored melted wax drippings.

As the ‘60s departed, so too did the popularity of Chianti. It was not that the wine changed, it was the wine drinker’s preferences that did. Americans discovered California sweet white wines, which reigned supreme during the 1970s while Italian wines languished nearly into obscurity — finding their place mostly in Italian-American homes and Italian restaurants. It was a rather ignominious fate for something that was so popular for so many years but, as they say, tempus fugit.