While the Lazio region of central Italy might be home to one of the country’s most enticing culinary destinations — Rome, of course — the same can’t be said for the area’s wine. With renowned regions of Tuscany to the north and Campania to the south, Lazio’s bottles are often relegated to local restaurant tables and widely ignored on the international market. There are 26 distinct designations within Lazio, and one in particular has even been described as the planet’s “dullest white wine” by esteemed wine writers Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson in “The World Atlas of Wine.” Why would anyone pay extra attention to these seemingly lackluster wines? Well, it largely comes down to some goofy punctuation.
The region’s designation under the Italian denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) system is “Est! Est!! Est!!! di Montefiascone.” Slap that on a label and it tends to stand out on wine-shop shelves among Italian white wines like Fiano di Avellino and Roero Arneis, which tend to boast considerably fewer exclamation points. Legend has it that this unusual grammatical choice dates back to the 12th century, during which a German bishop was traveling to the Vatican for a meeting with the pope. According to the tale, the bishop sent someone from the church ahead of him to determine the best route, including which villages had the best wines. He was instructed to write “est” — Latin for “it is” — on the door or wall of any inns he visited that had stand-out
