Populism is all around us these days. Expertise is out of fashion. Your friend who manages a small business is just as able to balance the national budget as any so-called expert economist. And your palate is just as good as the palate of any so-called wine expert.

In the beginning, France was blessed with good growing conditions for wine grapes—as were some locales to the south, including Italy. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. More recently, in the beginning of a sit-down with my daily wine news site, I came across an article in which the central claim was that Italy is catching up to France in the fine …

In many of life’s artistic and skilled pursuits, you’ll find a singular enigmatic figure who follows a less traveled path and forges something unique. This person is often something of an iconoclast, plainly marching to the beat of a different drummer.

When I’m in Rome, I occasionally go to mega-tastings where you pay 200 euros and up to sample some of the world’s greatest wines. I don’t do it often, but such events provide once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to taste otherwise inaccessible bottles. For example, at Bibenda Day 2013 the organizers poured, among other notable wines, ’77 Valentini Trebbiano, ’90 Pergole Torte, ‘98 …

I’ve been wondering about the wine gods lately. Are they good? Mostly good? Indifferent? Do they believe in Karma?

Let’s call that item number one on the list of things I like about Italian wine: It makes your Italian food better. Simple as that.