I have always believed that the best way to present a product or a place is to think of it as an “experience.” Living a product or an activity in an immersive way has a completely different impact. Enjoying a product or any situation while being accompanied by a story always carries a special charm.
This is why here on Wining.it we tend not to talk about wine or food in a technical way. What fascinates us are the stories, the character of the producer and their approach, as well as what we felt — and feel — during a particular experience.
Knowing what we have in the glass or on the plate is essential. But I don’t believe that getting lost among adjectives and “aromas” is enough to describe what our senses perceive. Easy to describe, yet difficult to imagine — and even harder to replicate, given that the subjective component always matters.
This is why I like talking about experiences — and an experience can be told without technicalities, with the pleasure of sharing it even with those who are not experts.
Vinea Lucens is an experience that (finally) puts to good use the values of our territory. If your vineyard has the “honor” of being crossed by a stretch of the Appia Antica, I find it extremely intelligent and effective to let us feel emotion through a nighttime walk made of stories, images, and yes — imagination.
We are just outside the Castelli Romani, on the 54 hectares of Parvus Ager, and we find Silvana Lulli — fourth‑generation winemaker of the Lulli family — welcoming us in the farmyard (perhaps not the correct term, but I like to think of it that way) in front of the vineyard.
Hay bales for seating and a table set with their products.
Just enough time to wait for darkness (enjoying an aperitivo at the nearby restaurant “Stazione Mole”), and we’re ready — headphones on — to begin a walk through the vineyard filled with lights, sounds, and stories.
It’s an experience to live, not to tell. I can try with photos and videos, but the real emotion is stepping, in the dark, onto the ancient paving stones of the Appia Antica, thinking — even just for a moment — about what has passed over those stones centuries ago.
We finish the walk — about an hour. We refresh ourselves with water. Then with Parvus Ager’s Vermentino, of which Silvana is proud.
In a single moment, we connected with a winery, with its wines, with its territory, with history, with Rome. Immersively.
This is what I mean when I talk about an “experience.”
