Dear Readers,
The history of Italy is a long and fascinating one. Italy has existed since the 1st Century BC but was confined to the region now known as the “toe” of the boot. The rest of modern day Italy went through a series of conquests and wars under many flags, including Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Vatican (known at the time as the Papal States), and Napoleonic France, to name just a few. Italy, as we know it today, didn’t exist until 1870, thus making it an even younger republic than the United States.
What makes Italy special is that all of its regions have maintained their individuality in spite of their unification. Each region not only has its own distinct history, but its own cuisine, fashion, and colloquialisms. While each region shares the Italian language, certain words and phrases are inherently Venetian, Tuscan, etc. Every major city feels like a different world in comparison to its neighbors to the North or South. I fell in love with Italy when I first visited there in 2012 and have felt compelled to return there over and over. In 2015, while visiting a vineyard in the Valpolicella district of Veneto (formerly part of Venice), I felt a story coming to life – the story of a struggling vineyard and the young woman hand chosen by its dying owner to save, not only the vineyard, but the man running it. I wanted the reader to see Italy through the eyes of a foreigner coming to this wonderful and romantic world for the first time and falling in love with both the country and the man she meets there. I hope that I have done justice to the centuries-old families, businesses, and magnificent art and architecture that is Italy.
I hope you will fall in love with Italy as I did, through my words and descriptions. So come with me now to this world of intoxicating beauty where wine and art are held to a higher standard and where romance and intrigue can be found among the Whispering Vines.
Amy Schisler