Wooden Wine Map of Italy

Italy, and the tools of the trade

Italy cut in wood and mounted directly on the wall with no chart behind it, 55 × 60 cm, the wine zones raised on a walnut-stained base, and around it thirteen badges shaped like the trade itself: a laurel wreath for Valle d'Aosta and Lombardia, a cork for Piemonte, a jug for Liguria and Tuscany, a bunch of grapes for Trentino-Alto Adige, a barrel for Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a vine leaf for Veneto, a wedge of cheese for Emilia-Romagna, a goblet for Marche and Abruzzo, a glass for Umbria, a leafy branch for Lazio and Campania, a corkscrew for Molise and Puglia, an amphora for Basilicata and Calabria, and a round badge with a vineyard engraved on it for Sardegna and Sicilia. A wooden title plaque, Carta dei vini d'Italia, comes with them.

Each badge carries one or two region names and their grape varieties, Vermentino and Sangiovese, Sagrantino and Grechetto, Verdicchio and Montepulciano. The France wine map is a map with labels; this one is a map with a still life around it.

Every region, which is the whole point

All twenty Italian regions produce wine, and all twenty are engraved on the base, with the towns between them. It is a fact people know in the abstract and rarely see laid out, and it is the reason an Italian wine map is more interesting than the country's fame alone would suggest. The region names and grape varieties are in Italian; the town names are in English, Rome, Naples, Florence, Turin.

The relief is yours to build

The map arrives as flat boards, 84 pieces in all. You press the country out of three numbered boards, then the wine-zone pieces in three tones, which come on their own boards already taped: peel the backing and set each one onto the map following the engraved outlines, and the zones rise off the base in their own tones.

Arranging it

The badges go where you put them. Tight to the peninsula and the map stays contained; spread out and it occupies far more wall than the 55 cm of the country itself. Lay everything on the floor first. The arrangement is the design decision, and it is much easier to change before the tape is on.

Mounting

Short strips of the double-sided tape on the back of each piece, outer pieces first, badges last. Allow an hour or two. Nothing drilled, nothing permanent, and easier with two people. It can also go on a board or inside a frame of your own; for the framed look without the work, the Italy panel is the same map already assembled.

Italy or France

The wooden wine map of France is the same system for the other great wine country: thirteen regions, each with a badge shaped like a bottle, a barrel or an ice bucket.

One honest limitation

Decorative rather than authoritative. Vineyard boundaries are simplified to what can be cut at this scale, and the smallest denominations are grouped into their regions rather than drawn separately.