(HuffPost) - According to the Wine Economics Research Centre at the University of Adelaide, the wine industry produced over 7.7 billion gallons of wine in 2014. That’s enough for a little over a gallon of wine for every single person on earth. Remarkably, although there are over a thousand grape varieties suitable for making wine, two-dozen varieties accounted for roughly 85 percent of the world’s wine production.

Italy is a welcome exception to the increasing uniformity of the wine world. There may be over 2,000 varieties of wine grapes currently cultivated in Italy - no one is really sure. At least 350 specific varieties have been identified and studied to varying degrees. Many of these unique wines never make it far from their immediate environs. Those that do make it to North America are often lost in the veritable sea of Cabernets and Chardonnays that crowd the typical wine store.

Among Italy’s most remarkable wine offerings is a little known grape called Aglianico (pronounced ah-l’yee-an-nee-koh). This is an ancient grape whose origins are still buried in the recesses of antiquity. First cultivated in Greece, it was brought by Greek settlers to ancient Cumae in southern Italy around 800 BC. Its name is likely a corruption of the Latin term Vitis hellenica or “Greek vine.” Until the 15th century it was referred to as Ellenico - the local term for Greek.