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“

In recent years there has been a serious confrontation between the two most well-known containers used for wine-making: on the one hand the wooden bar­rel, on the other the amphora, which has come back into fashion following the outstanding work of several wine-makers and oenologists who, with considera­ble ability, have breathed new life into the use of a container that had – although not completely – disap­peared from the scene.

The challenge, however, was not confined simply to the oenological field, but often took the form of ide­ological ‘shores’, where the use of the amphora was depicted as a sort of return to the ‘origins’, to a past almost irremediably lost to contemporary man. However, the use of the amphora did not disappear by chance or because of a conspiracy inspired by modern industry, but because its use was drastically overtak­en by the potential hidden behind the container that we all know: the wooden barrel.

This “admirable instrument”, as defined by one of the most important French wine historians, Yves Re­nouard, began to be used in the Gallic-Roman regions of the French Alps as early as the second century AD, and by the end of the fourteenth century had become the standard container for the transport of wine and for vinifying grapes throughout Europe. However, the use of terracotta jars did not disappear completely, especially in the Mediterranean area, but the barrel was the best option for large-scale transportation: this wasn’t due to tasting reasons, but to logistical and economic reasons. At the very beginning of XV century the commercial revolution, which had started in the second half of XIII century, had reached its peak and ratified the birth of mass marketing for several goods, especially heavy goods such as wine (the so-called big goods). For the first time, it was finally possible to ship large quantities of wine, through long sea and land routes, from one side to the other of the known world.

In this scenario, the amphora was not regarded as a suitable container: it was fragile, bulky and, since it required at least two people for the loading and unloading operations it should not be too heavy. Be­cause of this, it had a very low capacity.

The barrel, on the other hand, being more manage­able, could be lifted with winches without too many dangers and was able to contain hundreds of liters. In a certain sense, it can be said that thanks to the barrel wines could easily be transported for long dis­tances constantly and efficiently, thus making the use of barrels so well known that they lay the founda­tions of the current world of wine. Today, the choice of terracotta or wood is luckily not based on logistical issues but only – and here is its beauty – on organo­leptic reasons.

How old a procedure is compared to another can’t be the reason for prevarication, but rather a reason for precious diversification, otherwise why stopping at amphorae and not moving backwards?

A pioneering and entertaining article on the history of wineskins was published in a recent publication on the history of leather. The Greek word ἀσκός is perhaps not very familiar to us: it is the sack of skin (wineskin) mentioned in the Gospel of St. Mark, where it is said “Vino nuovo in otri nuovi”. Could this be the solution to go back to the golden age? I don’t know, but it is believed that the more the history of wine is investigated, savouring its complicated heterogeneity, the more we shall be able to understand that diversity enriches and unifies, rather than dividing.
by Daniele Ognibene
www.ilsommeliermagazine.it

“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.