The Italian wine journalist and
wine critic Luigi Veronelli (1926-2004) was born in Milan. After studying humanities and philosophy, he became a publisher and in the fifties, in addition to philosophical and political papers, he published the culinary magazine "Gastronomo" with great success from 1956 onwards. He subsequently wrote for many newspapers and magazines, wrote numerous books on wine and worked for the Italian TV station RAI. Veronelli was an avowed advocate of the French appellation system and was committed to its implementation in his homeland. For a long time, he was critical of the DOC system because he felt that it did not have a sufficiently consistent effect on quality. This led temporarily to his exclusion from Italian television. Animated by a trip to California at the beginning of the 1980s, he propagated the
barrique ageing process, which ultimately contributed to a boom in the process, which had previously been virtually unknown in his home country.
Through his publications he has contributed a great deal to the improvement of quality in Italian viticulture. The
wine guide "Veronelli-Guide" (Veronelli - Wines from Italy), which continues to be published even after the death of Veronelli, presents the results of
wine evaluations of over 6,000 wines from 1,500 producers, carried out according to strict criteria, every year. The rating system awards up to three stars for excellent, very good and good wines. One sun stands for outstanding quality for a wine that has been represented in the Guide with good ratings for at least three years and has achieved at least 91 points
100-point system at the tasting. All wines are classified in price categories and labelled according to the type of ageing and maturation. In addition, information on cultivation, yields per hectare, grape varieties and the location of the wineries can be found. Another very well-known Italian wine guide is
Gambero Rosso.