The annual Salone del Novello, the only trade fair dedicated to Italian new wine, will change venue next year and move from its traditional home here to Verona.
The fair marks its 20th anniversary this year and will take place on November 5 with the presentation of 70 Novello wines from throughout Italy.
For the second year in a row, the celebration will be staged alongside the Salone 'Best Buys', a trade fair reserved for market operators who will taste and compare 74 Italian wines which range in price from between three to eight euros.
For the past 20 years, the Salone Novello, organised by the Vicenza Trade Fair authority in association with Italy's leading wine magazine "Civilta' del Bere", has been staged in the first week of November in order to get a jump on its more famous French cousin, Beaujolais Nouveau.
Beaujolais, on the other hand, cannot be opened until the third Thursday of November, this year November 15.
The phenomenon of new wine began in the 1950s in the Beaujolais area of France's Burgundy region and caught on in Italy in the last decade or so.
Novello, like Beaujolais Nouveau, is a light, fruity red wine which by law must be bottled within a year of the harvest, but in practice is bottled within a few weeks.
Although connoisseurs may snub it, Novello has become increasingly popular, especially among young people, thanks to its clear red color, fruity taste and low alcoholic content, only 11%.
The fruity flavour of new wine is in part due to the fact that the juice of the grapes is not left too long with the grape skins which contain the chemical tannin.
This allows winemakers to blend several types of grapes and the wine can even be served chilled like white wines.
One of the main differences between Novello and Beaujolais is that several of the Italian wines retain some of the carbonation used to accelerate the fermentation process while the French Nouveau is traditionally flat.
