At the end of April, Edison Foundation, in collaboration with Federvini, released the online movie Artedivino by the German director Alexander Kockerbeck. Over ap­proximately forty minutes, the film portrays the coming together of the nectar of Bacchus and Italy’s territory, art and culture while capturing countless views of wine landscapes from southern to northern Italy.

During the long and dull isolation we had to endure in order to contain the Covid-19 virus, we rediscovered the importance of landscapes. The mere sight of natural spaces by looking at photographs and videos, evokes reassuring and comforting, sometimes nostalgic, feel­ings in those who observe them. The study The Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment by N. Nadkarni of the University of Utah, published in the magazine Nature in 2017, had already highlighted the benefits of nature imagery on people in places of detention.

The time for contemplation, memory and recollection is over. We all desperately long to experience landscapes, to travel through them, regaining the sense of freedom that only wide-open spaces can provide; that special tie that binds man to nature against the denaturation of biological cycles.

Wine landscapes are the focus of this issue of Il Som­melier. Compared to other topics related to the world of wine, this topic remains poorly explored, while the oth­ers have been covered using the approach expressed by the words of Italo Calvino: “I am interested in everything that straddles various disciplines […] I try to base myself on things I see, on objects, on images “(Corsera 1984).

In “wine landscapes”, which are part of rural land­scapes, fixed and mobile, material and immaterial el­ements coexist, such as terroir (OIV 2010) and senso­riality (colours, scents, silence …). Using specialized and artistic knowledge, we have tried to describe wine landscapes from a dual perspective: narration of the landscape and the landscape as its own novelist.

Italy’s varied geography has created several unique wine landscapes that have received international recognition. For example, the wine-growing landscapes of the Lang­he-Roero and Monferrato and the hills of Prosecco di Conegliano and Valdobbiadene are considered “cultural landscapes” and are listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The island of Pantelleria, characterized by the cul­tivation of the sapling vine and the art of dry-stone wall­ing, is part of humanity’s intangible cultural heritage. The traditional vineyards of the Soave are considered a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System by the prestigious GIAHS-FAO project, while the traditional vine­yards of Mandrolisai are listed in the National Register of Historic Rural Landscapes of the Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies (MiPAAF), with the aim of placing the local landscapes, characterized by agricultural activities, forest and pastoral throughout history, at the centre.

Landscape is perspective; a new vision that changes de­pending on the point of view. It also represents beauty, harmony of colours, shapes, sizes, spaces and densi­ty. It can simultaneously be panorama and geography, environment, anthropic space that maintains values, history, culture, identity and art alive. Landscapes also encompass economy, which the recent pandemic has seriously brought to its knees. Goods to be marketed are produced within these territories, including strategic plans to enhance and protect them.

Currently, economic indicators are far from encourag­ing including for the wine sector. But History has taught us that crises are often epiphanies. They reveal new opportunities that must be seized. As the anthropolo­gist Eugenio Turri once wrote: “Man discovers the world through the landscape”. This is not limited to the physi­cal movement in space. Discovery here is intended in its entirety: a rethinking of values, new meanings, creative undertakings that can connect or reconnect apparently disjointed pieces; the conceiving of new projects and action plans based on new rhythms of interaction and collaboration.

Landscapes are a precious and important kaleidoscope, capable of creating new symmetries, new observations that today, more than ever, we must seize if we want the economy to start over. Perhaps, landscapes could be the point of departure for the wine sector. We propose it.
Alice Lupi
ARTICOLO TRATTO DA ” Il Sommelier Magazine“

“One day, Dionysus was the guest of Eneo (Oineùs) and fell in love with his wife Altea. When Eneo re­alized this, he decided to leave the city on a pre­text. Dionysus slept with Altea, and their union led to the birth of Deianira; then, in exchange for his generous hospitality, Dionysus gave a vine to Eneo and taught him how to plant it, stipulating that his offering be called Oinos, in honor of the name of his host.” (Igino, Myths, 129).

One of the many myths about the origin of wine (this one being of Thessalic origin) was established well before the arrival of Dionysus himself in the Greek Pantheon. The myth dates back, in fact, to the third millennium BC (the Sumerian period) and is the founding poem of western culture: the Gil­gamesh Epic, wherein the figure of Siduri, “the girl who makes wine”, is custodian of the knowledge (of “thought” and “word”, hence lògos), which perhaps allows mortals, by means of a fleeting Montalian “passage”, to achieve a connection with the Beyond.

The “spiritual” drink that Siduri gives to Gilgamesh is by no means “natural”, but absolutely “cultur­al”, a watershed between the wilderness (vitis labrusca and grapes picked from the vine) and civ­ilization (vitis vinifera and the domesticated vine). Wine, therefore, in ancient mysticism, is a vi­tal element “par excellence”, which, over the centuries, became the Blood of Christ and a formidable metaphor for the three monotheis­tic religions of the Mediterranean basin. Even the prohibition of its consumption in the Islam­ic world is an implicit recognition of the ritual power of the nectar of wine.

In fact, the success of a drink that has accompa­nied homo occidentalis since 7,000 BC could not be explained if its origin were not anchored to the Myth: hence the belief in its magical, esoteric or pharmacological properties: Caesar uses wine to fight an epidemic of plague that threatens his ranks (Plutarch, Vita Caesaris). In the ninth cen­tury the Salerno Medical School recommended its use in a “sober diet”: “Inter pastam bibe vinum!”

So much of the vocabulary of our world derives from the Myth: the grape itself (àmpelos) takes its name from the first love of Dionysus, the satyr Ampelo, whence for example, the word ampelog­raphy originated.Many names of vines remind us of archaic stories, of the migration of populations, myths lost in the mists of time: Aglianico, Casavecchia, Malvasia, Teroldego, and so on.Despite the contribution of technology, and de­spite the very modern way of producing it, wine, in some ways, is still a Myth; it is enough to think of champagne and its evocative power.Man will always need the Myth as religio (glue, from “rilegare” (“bind”)), able to “compensate” social inequalities (Barbera and Champagne, G. Gaber), and to create a “cultured” awareness, able to stimulate the action of a community to­wards a goal: wine, a link between archaic ele­ments and allegorical legends, will accompany us in this pleasantly insinuating way, throughout the coming millennia.
di ANTONIO MAZZITELLI
Articolo tratto da“Il Sommelier”

Although spring in Suvereto is slow to come, the vineyards at the Rigoli winery are expressing all their luxuriance, so It’s time to start the green pruning.
After the building of the new winery in 2018, this year our company continues to grow by planting a new Cabernet Franc vineyard that has adapted so well to our climates and is already grown in our company (in ASSIOLO).
The land on which it was planted is located at the foot of a hill with a gentle slope that slopes gently. The composition is mixed clay-stone with mineral and calcareous components.
Cabernet Franc is a vine that in Val di Cornia has been able to express great wines with a great structure and unmistakable aromas.
The aromas of Cabernet Frac could not be more clair than this: pepper, pepper, smoky traces and humus (leaves) that mix with a dark fruit where we find blueberries, currants, raspberries and strawberries. Licorice, laurel, earthy traces and herbaceous background always. Mint, chocolate and violets go hand in hand. Its balsamic charge is unmistakable
On the palate it is round, warm, ample, medium-bodied but endowed with a lively freshness and above all never too heavy. A good Franc can be an addictive wine, it has a balance that encourages drinking and leaves no way out. You could confuse it with Cabernet Sauvignon, but it is not so tannic, dark and intense.
It will take a few years before the vineyard can give the first wines, but we are not in a hurry so we let nature take its time.

Starts the building of new wine cellar of Rigoli’s Farm

The beginning of management of Niccolò and Edoardo (Nelusco’s sons) bring a new investment plan, the construction of the cellar is only a part of this plan. In fact the next steps will be a new vineyard, the making of a new tasting room and the conversion at Organic method.
The project is composed by a roof that will be used for the first processing of grapes during the harvest , an other room of 200 mq for the ageing of wines and a room of barrels for the aged.

Our wines increase the appreciation of the customers and the expert of the guides, for example The Gambero Rosso’s guide of 2018 gives a very good valuation at Assiolo 2013 and Montepitti 2015, in 2017 had evaluated positively N’Etrusco.

The fans of our wines can meet us at The Vinitaly in 16 /17 April in Pad. 10 desk D2, in the Anteprima Vini Lucca on 5 and 6 May and Il Marcato dei Vini FIVI di Roma a Cinecittà on 19 and 20 May.
How wants to buys can find it also in our wine shop on line!

Stay Tuned!

2018 is going to be a year of great news for Rigoli’s business.

In March we will start working for the construction of the new wine cellar, an investment that our company had projected long time ago and that, thank to these years’ efforts, is finally succeeding in realizing. The wine cellar is part of a wider plan of expansion of the company, which, with the entry of Niccolò and Edoardo, will include the realization of a new tasting room and the extension of the wineyard.

March is also going to be the month of Prowein, the world fair of Düsseldorf. An event that will allow an expansion of the company’s market and exports. In this occasion we present the new productios of Stradivino and Assiolo wine.  After Germany, we are back in Italy, where we are going to take part into the awaited Vinitaly project.

In May, we are going to be, once again, at Anteprima Vini Lucca, the important event that gathers the greatest producers of the Tuscan Coast; still in May, our company will participate, together with the association 11 of wine, to the World Football Championship of wine producers, which will take place in Slovenia.

Other news are round the corner, keep following us…