Stanley Tucci is exploring the world of Italian wine in a new TV series

Hollywood icon, actor and director Stanley Tucci has been touring Italy for a new CNN series titled 'Searching for Italy', travelling from Tuscany to Sicily to find out more about food and drinks in the country.

Tucci, born in New York to a family of Italian origins (from Calabria), filmed the show in partnership with Raw TV, a London-basd production company, and the six-episode series opens in Naples, where he met superstar 'pizzaiolo' Enzo Coccia in the Quartieri Spagnoli (Spanish Quarter/Neighbourhoods), one of the most colourful (and once notorious) areas of Naples.

He then travels to Rome, Bologna, Milan and Florence where he enjoys a glass of Sangiovese wine from the famous wine windows, originally utilised by wealthy families to sell wine and then repurposed to sell food (and wine) during the Plague to reduce contact to a minimum, and the same exact thing happened a few centuries later because of C19.

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In one of the episodes, Tucci travels to Sicily to meet Arianna Occhipinti, the winemaker that produces Nero d'Avola, a type of organic red wine.

Executive producer Eve Kay said "Sicily isn't well-known for its wines [outside of Italy], nor have Sicilian women been traditionally commercially successful as winemakers, so we wanted to change the common perception on both those scores and champion it’s superb indigenous wines".

The first four episodes of the show were filmed in late 2019, while the final two episodes were filmed in September. Searching for Italy premiered on Valentine's Day and will air weekly on CNN.

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