Ian D’Agata

Ian D’Agata is a multi-award winning author who has been speaking and writing about wine for over thirty years. His Native Wine Grapes of Italy (University of California Press) is considered the bible of Italian wine and was the Louis Roederer International Wine Awards Book of the Year in 2015 and one of the top wine books of the year for the LA Times, the Financial Times and the New York Times. A former Contributing editor of Decanter, he is currently the Senior editor of Vinous web wine magazine and the Italian correspondent for China’s TasteSpirit and the Creative director of Collisioni’s Wine and Food Project (Collisioni is Italy’s largest music, literature, wine and food festival), as well as the Director of the Indigena festival (devoted to Italy’s native grapes and wines) both held annually in Barolo, and the Scientific director of an international wine and food school, the Italian International Indigenous Center Wine and Food Studies (3iC). He is also the Scientific advisor of Vinitaly, Europe’s largest wine fair.

Intensely devoted to the research and study of native grapes, he was named an official member of Italy’s prestigious Accademia della Vite e del Vino in 2017 and has collaborated over the years with numerous universities. He has taught culture of Italian wine and tasting at New York University’s Master’s Program in Food Sciences, lectured in wine marketing for the University of Rome-Tor Vergata and was Research Professor of Oenology at the University of New Mexico. Twice nominated as the best wine journalist in Italy by the Comitato Grandi Cru d’Italia (the only person to have ever won both in the “young” and “absolute” categories), other awards for his wine writing and teaching include the 2018 VQA Promoter award and the 2017 Cuvée Award of Excellence for wine writing and promotion (both from Canada), the Medaglia Cangrande in 20 from Italy’s Friuli Venezia Giulia region, and being nominated in 2016 by Les Plumes d’Or (as voted by France’s wine makers and star chefs) as one of the world’s eight most important and influential wine writers. In 2019 he will release two brand new books, Italy’s Native Wine Grape Terroirs (published by University of California Press) and Barolo and Barbaresco: Listening to the Voice of Nebbiolo in the Langhe (co-authored with Michele Longo and Lingzi He, two of his best students he has successfully mentored over the years). In 2019, he was named Vice President of the International Terroir Council.