Italian wine guides 2027: the winners so far, and where the critics agree

Every autumn Italian wine sits its exams. Between late September and December the guides come out, and with them the symbols that will end up on neck collars, on restaurant wine lists and on the shelf tags of wine shops: Tre Bicchieri, Cinque Grappoli, scores out of a hundred. For anyone buying a bottle, though, the problem never changes: there are a great many guides, each has its own yardstick, and reading them all is a job in itself.

Here we do the work of pulling together the first releases of the 2027 edition, without handing out marks of our own: we report what the guides have decided and look at where, setting off down different roads, they end up saying the same thing.

Bibenda 2027: the top ten

The first ranking to arrive was Bibenda’s, the guide of the Fondazione Italiana Sommelier chaired by Franco Maria Ricci. At the end of September it released a preview of the ten top wines of the 2027 edition:

• Arnaldo Rivera, Barolo Villero 2022 (Piemonte)
• Elena Walch, Alto Adige Bianco Grande Cuvée Beyond The Clouds 2023 (Alto Adige)
• Venica & Venica, Collio Sauvignon Ronco delle Mele 2025 (Friuli Venezia Giulia)
• Pieropan, Soave Classico La Rocca 2024 (Veneto)
• Petrolo, Val d’Arno di Sopra Merlot Vigna Galatrona 2023 (Toscana)
• Il Pollenza, Il Pollenza 2023 (Marche)
• San Giovenale, Habemus Etichetta Bianca 2024 (Lazio)
• Cantine Antonio Caggiano, Taurasi Vigna Macchia dei Goti 2022 (Campania)
• Coppi, Gioia del Colle Primitivo Senatore 2023 (Puglia)
• Benanti, Etna Bianco Superiore Pietra Marina 2021 (Sicilia)

The geography is striking: ten wines, ten different regions, from the Langhe to Etna. So is the weight of the whites, four out of ten, including a Sauvignon from the latest vintage and a Soave: a sign that even the most classical guides have stopped treating white wine as second division. The ceremony for all the Cinque Grappoli winners is scheduled in Rome on 28 November.

Winemag 2027: awards by category

On 29 September the Winemag.it guide also came out, edited by Davide Bortone, which rather than a single ranking hands out awards by style and by area. The wine of the year is a metodo classico sparkler with a very long time on the lees: the Trento Doc Aquila Reale Riserva 2015 by Cesarini Sforza, 98 points. Best red is the Taurasi Riserva La loggia del cavaliere 2017 by Tenuta Cavalier Pepe, best white the Alto Adige Sauvignon Riserva Vigna Oberkerschbaum 2023 by J. Hofstätter, which also takes home the title of best Italian winery.

Among the category awards, the ones worth flagging are those the traditional guides tend to overlook: best rosé (Castel del Monte Bombino Nero Veritas 2025, Torrevento), best skin-contact wine (Bakren 2023, Sosol), best fortified (Marsala Vergine Riserva 1986, Vinci Vini), best frizzante (Mec L’è? 2022, Nebraie). The top score, 98, is shared by five labels.

DoctorWine and Gambero Rosso: the other two voices

DoctorWine’s Guida Essenziale ai Vini d’Italia 2027, its thirteenth edition, coincides with fifteen years of Daniele Cernilli’s publication and was presented in Milan on 3 October with a walk-around tasting of more than 500 wines. It is an avowedly selective guide, not an encyclopaedic one, and this year it singles out 910 wines for value for money: for anyone shopping with a budget in mind it is probably the most useful list of the season. It comes out in print and as an app, in Italian and in English.

The Gambero Rosso, with Vini d’Italia 2027, has opted for a staged rollout. On 1 October in Asti it gave its Young Producer of the Year award to Castello di Uviglie, the Monferrato estate run by the cousins Francesca and Davide Bonzano. The official launch of the guide, with the full list of Tre Bicchieri, is expected in Rome on 25 October.

Where the guides agree

Laying the rankings released so far side by side brings out a few common threads, and this is where the guides become genuinely useful: when different yardsticks lead to the same place.

Taurasi. It is the only denomination to appear at the very top of both Bibenda (Caggiano, Vigna Macchia dei Goti 2022) and Winemag (Cavalier Pepe, best red with the Riserva 2017). Two different producers, two vintages five years apart: the signal concerns Irpinian Aglianico as a whole rather than any single winery.

The whites of Alto Adige. Bibenda puts Elena Walch’s Grande Cuvée in its top ten; Winemag crowns J. Hofstätter best winery in Italy and its Sauvignon best white. Here too, two different estates, the same region, the same conclusion: some of Italy’s most ambitious whites are now born in the mountains.

Sauvignon. Venica & Venica in the Collio for Bibenda, Hofstätter in Alto Adige for Winemag: an international grape, often looked down upon, that in the cool zones of the North-East has become one of the flagships of Italian quality.

This is not a ranking of our own, nor does it want to be. It is a way of reading the guides the way you read opinion polls: an isolated figure says little; the convergence of independent sources says a great deal more.

Calendar of upcoming releases

• 25 October 2026: launch in Rome of Gambero Rosso’s Vini d’Italia 2027, with the full list of Tre Bicchieri
• 28 November 2026: Bibenda 2027 Cinque Grappoli awards ceremony in Rome

The other big autumn guides, from Slow Wine to Vitae from the Associazione Italiana Sommelier, usually arrive in the same weeks: once they are all out, we will redo the full cross-check, guide by guide, to find the wines that truly put everyone in agreement.

In the meantime, a practical tip: a symbol on a neck collar is a good starting point, not a guarantee of pleasure. If a bottle turns up in several different guides, the odds that you will like it rise considerably. If it appears in only one, read who awarded it and why: that often tells you more than the score.

❦