VERONA, Italy – The wine version of a gathering of the tribes occurs annually in this ancient northern Italian city, which is better known for its Roman arena and Shakespeare’s saga of Romeo and Juliet. But for the wine world, Verona is synonymous with a massive trade show called Vinitaly that convenes every April.

Occupying some 10 pavilions that sprawl across Verona’s permanent exhibition space called the Fiera, the Vinitaly trade show is like no other anywhere. Bordeaux has its showcase for French wines called Vinexpo. And the Loire Valley has a more localized trade fair every year in Angers. (Oddly, California has no such show.)

But Vinitaly is different. Not only is seemingly every significant Italian winery present, which means literally thousands of producers, but unlike Vinexpo, the representatives in each exhibition space – which the Italians, in their unabated love of using English words, call “lo stand” – are not mere sales reps standing by to take your order, as in television infomercials, but rather they are the owners themselves. Believe me, you’re not going to find Baron Eric de Rothschild pouring you wine at the Chateau Lafite-Rothschild booth at Vinexpo.

Vinitaly represents the vastness of Italy’s wine offerings. Interested in Brunello di Montalcino? There’s a whole section of more than 70 Brunello producers. After tasting and talking, you’ll find the whole world of Brunello gossip and tastes.

For example, you will soon discover that the less expensive version called Rosso di Montalcino, which has long been presented as a so-called “baby Brunello,” is usually nothing of the sort.

“Everybody thinks that Rosso di Montalcino is declassified Brunello di Montalcino, a wine made from the grapes of the same vineyard that would otherwise create your Brunello di Montalcino,” the owner of a small Brunello estate called Il Marronetto, Alessandro Mori, said.

“That was true 25 years ago. But today it’s usually nothing of the sort. Producers now have other vineyards, well away from the vineyards they use for their Brunello wines, that are meant exclusively for their Rosso di Montalcino,” Mr. Mori reported. “A lot of these are in a new appellation called Sant’Animo. It’s not at all the same,” he said, shaking his head in exaggerated disgust.

Needless to say, Mr. Mori assured a visitor that his Rosso di Montalcino is indeed the real thing, namely wine from the same vineyard that creates Il Marronetto’s flagship Brunello di Montalcino. And sure enough, it is superb, the 2004 Rosso di Montalcino an elegant supple sangiovese wine. (Brunello, the “little brown one,” is the name for a strain or clone of sangiovese isolated in the Montalcino area in Tuscany just south of Chianti Classico.)

When you then taste Il Marronetto’s 2001 Brunello di Montalcino, however, you go from monaural to stereo. Dense, rich and brimming with a no-tech purity, it is the sort of wine that helps explain in one sip why Brunello achieved such fame, as well as high prices. Regrettably, too many of Brunello’s other producers, now numbering around 200, are far less persuasive.

In some ways, Mr. Mori was probably at the wrong show. For at the same time I was tasting his wine at Vinitaly, there was a shadow show going on elsewhere in Verona, slipstreaming behind the magnetic pull of Vinitaly.

This shadow show is called Vini Verri, or true wines. Like religious sects that are ever subdividing, the producers at Vini Verri believe that their wine vision is the true way to vinous bliss. What makes their wines “true” is the producers’ adherence to radically simplified grape growing and winemaking techniques. Many of them are biodynamic, followers of the ultra-organic philosophy of the late Rudolf Steiner.

In some ways, Vini Verri is more interesting than Vinitaly, a less polished performance, like visiting a revival tent show after emerging from Barnum & Bailey. With some 150 producers, Vini Verri is not only more manageable but inevitably far less commercial. Not least, you’re among true believers, some of whom do indeed deliver euphorically fine wines.

There’s the tiny Tuscan producer called Massa Vecchia, whose wines can be found on American shores. Owner-winemaker Fabrizio Niccolaini follows the teachings of a Japanese agricultural philosopher, yet another path down the same road of an extreme “hands off” approach in the vineyard and winery.

The results, in Massa Vecchia’s case, are nothing less than extraordinary – for most of the wines, anyway. A 2004 aleatico, a red grape that creates an intense, slightly sweet wine, is memorable in its wild cherry intensity. The 2001 La Fonte di Pietrarsa is a cabernet sauvignon that can rival the greatest red Bordeaux in its flavor purity and finesse. And a 1999 Vin Santo “Occhio di Pernice” (partridge eye) is one of the greatest versions of Vin Santo I’ve ever tasted, rivaling the universally acknowledged benchmark Vin Santo made by Avignonesi.

Yet other Vini Verri producers offered similarly exciting wines, such as the 2000 Sagrantino di Montefalco from tiny, artisanal Paolo Bea, a massive red wine that tastes like the most delicious mineral-dusted red berries. Or the 2001 Barolo “Cannubi San Lorenzo” from equally micro Giuseppe Rinaldi, a barolo so elegant and refined that you’d think you were drinking a great volnay.

And yes, there was a 2004 Rosso di Montalcino that was knock your socks off.It came from a brand-new (started in 2001) biodynamic producer called Stella di Camp. Dense, almost solid, it was effortlessly powerful and pure from low yields in a choice site. What it’s not, though, is in America – yet. But the owner assures us it soon will be. Keep an occhio peeled.