Gewürztraminer, aside from being fun to say, is perhaps the most complicated of the wine grapes. Why?

Barbera is a red Italian grape known for deep color, low tannins, and high acidity. Its high yield makes it historically known as a “peasant's wine,” since it is easily mass-produced.

Sangiovese is the quintessential Italian red grape, with spicy strawberry flavors and a natural oakiness that comes out when aged in barrels. 

To bring a little focus to our grape of the week, Barbera, we've put together our list of recommended wines. Take this list to your local shop and hunt one down.

Salad can be a challenging meal to pair to wine, but if you pay attention to a few key elements—namely, the standout ingredients and the acidity of the dressing—you can find a great match. It’s easy to overpower a salad with wine, but if you pay attention to the weight and body of each, you can strike the right balance. Check out this basic salad recipe and wine pairing, then share your own variations and wine pairings!

There’s no reason elegance needs to mean time-consuming. With a smidge of do-ahead preparation, this elegant north Italian dish will be ready to eat in an hour or less.

This is a classic Italian bean-and-sausage dish that is excellent fresh or made a few days ahead of time. Serve it with crusty bread, salad and an Italian wine and you'll surely be blissfully singing like Pavarotti by the end of dinner.

Sangiovese literally translates as "the blood of Jove" (another name for Jupiter, the Roman king of the gods). This is often taken as an indicator that this wine reaches back to Roman times, but the first known definitive written mention of the grape was actually not until the early 18^th century. Learn more about this Grape of the Week.

In a gut-wrenching display of spite, vandals destroyed 16,537 gallons—worth $16 million—of future Brunello di Montalcino wine in a Dec. 2 raid at the wine cellar of Case Basse in Tuscany.

Nebbiolo is the prince if not the king of Italian grapes, even though it amounts for less than 6% of Piedmont grape production. That 6% is responsible for the famed Barolo, Barbaresco, Ghemme and Gattinara wines. Those wines are perhaps the most rewarding wines to cellar and collect, with a potential to remain full flavored and complex for up to 30 years.