On October 24 and 25, the second edition of Borgo Eccellenze Vinicole Italiane brings together wineries selected by Luca Gardini, masterclasses, tastings and a programme of events throughout Sansepolcro’s historic centre. One of its key ambitions is to shine a spotlight on the Valtiberina as an emerging wine-producing region. (more…)
It is around seven in the evening on August 10 when the road begins to climb towards Cantine Fina. The light has already lost the harshness of the day, and western Sicily is settling into that warm glow that comes just before sunset, when the sun seems deliberately to slow down before surrendering to the sea. (more…)
“Did you already know you were making one of the world’s greatest red wines?”
“Yes. That’s exactly the idea I started with.”
(From “Manteniamoci giovani, vita e vino di Emidio Pepe”) (more…)
There are places you can only truly understand when someone tells you how they were first imagined. Because a vineyard, long before it becomes wine, is always an act of…
Every crisis needs a culprit. The wine world seems to have found its own: young people.
“Generation Z doesn’t drink.”
“People in their twenties prefer cocktails.”
“They have no wine culture.”
It is a simple explanation—perhaps too simple—but it has one major advantage: it shifts the focus away from the industry itself. If young people are the problem, then wine doesn’t need to change; they simply need to learn how to appreciate it. (more…)
“We got it wrong.”
There are words that do not come from the mind, but from somewhere much deeper. Words that emerge before the filter, before form, before even the decision to speak them. (more…)
I still have in my mind the image of Michele Lorenzetti bending down, picking up a handful of soil, holding it in his palm and then studying it thoughtfully as he slowly lets it run through his fingers. There is nothing theatrical about the gesture, no ostentatious rituality, only a precise, almost instinctive movement belonging to someone who does not observe the land from the outside but knows its most intimate grammar. It was in that moment, far more than through his words, that I began to understand what practicing biodynamics in Gattaia truly means. (more…)
For years, the wine world lived with an almost religious conviction: wine had to be at the center of the conversation. Trade fairs talked about wine. Tastings talked about wine. Producers talked about wine. Communicators talked about wine. (more…)
When we think of a wine region, our minds often turn immediately to the wine that best embodies its spirit. It is the reflection of an identity shaped over time, the result of a silent dialogue between people and nature. What is far less common is for the name of a wine or a territory to instantly evoke the name of a producer. (more…)
There are men who found movements, and then there are men who change the very vocabulary through which a civilization looks at itself. Carlo Petrini was precisely that: not merely the father of Slow Food, but the man who forced the world to reconsider the deeper meaning of eating. (more…)
There is a phrase that, for those born between Florence and its surrounding hills, is not merely a song but something closer to a call of the heart: “La porti un bacione a Firenze” (“Bring a big kiss to Florence”). Odoardo Spadaro wrote it in 1937 thinking of the nostalgia felt by those far from home, yet even today those words seem to describe the almost visceral bond between Florence and its land. (more…)
There are stories that are not born in a laboratory, but around a table. They carry the soft sound of hand-rolled pasta, the rich aroma of ragù simmering slowly, and that suspended light of Italian Sundays, when everything slows down and seems to remain there, just a little longer. (more…)
