WINE AND TERRITORY – BY PATRIZIA MARAZZI

A wine experience is a research. Experience is an important word that embodies the very idea of evolution: two words very present in the world of wine. Thanks to the experience, you learn, mature, and evolve. It’s part of life, how we are and how and what we want to become. An experience with wine is a continuous search for knowledge and comparison. The beauty is that it never ends.

The wine experience in Asia

I am always pleasantly surprised at how wine reinvents itself in taste and appearance to reach consumers. Not just as wine sales volumes, above all, is the ability to attract new consumers. Often they are people without wine drink tradition, but they are remain seduced by its charm.

The Asian continent, which is the most recent conquest, gives excellent satisfaction to producers with completely different placements depending on the country. For example, it is interesting that a considerable proportion of wine consumers in China are young, well-off, educated, and cosmopolitan women. These consumers consider wine to be the drink of choice of their social life. For them, the wine experience is a search for social status.

And in the Western World

In our west, on the other hand, we are seeing a growing demand for wine lovers looking for “experience” I am puzzled when a translated word sounds similar in Italian, but it fails to give the correct meaning. It seems we remain at a more superficial level of communication. It is hard for me to deal with wine as a “thing” and even more to define “experience” as a visit to the cellar with tasting, no matter how welcoming the winery may be.

In my opinion, a wine experience takes some motivation from the participant, a desire, a curiosity, a will to discover, a restlessness, maybe a push. I do not know exactly, but something must happen so that the experience becomes “also” a piece of mutual knowledge and a consequent gratification. The experience with wine is a constant search for knowledge.

Experience is a creation of humans

In this era, mainstream shows the trend, and consumers follow it. Of course, it must be “wow” and “Instagrammable” All right. And for whom, like me, are looking for anything else? I try to offer something close to my “demand” I want to meet guests who appreciate the experience. And once the event is over, may think: “Today I have discovered something I did not know, or at least I had not yet considered under this light” The places I choose are often panoramic, sometimes scenic. Most of the time, created by nature or by God for those who believe. Sometimes by humans with a precise purpose, very often defensive, propitiatory, or even thanksgiving.

And history matters

Winemaking in the area started about 2000 years ago. When the Romans conquered the peninsula by spreading their idea of civilization, wine included. It was different from the wine we drink today. But the guiding principle was the same. And very similar was the mode of consumption: something going beyond the need to cultivate and transform to obtain a durable product, definitely linked to a food need. It’s something that still shapes lifestyle, taste, language, behavior, sense of belonging.

Wine tourism and spirit of wine

Wine tourism has to do with the profound reason why people travel to get to know. No matter how far away, whether at 2000 km or 20 km. Or even if the destination is famous or not, what matters is the determination to add new “tiles” and not just glasses to one’s knowledge of a place, in the sense of terroir, not only of wine, that is, of people and lifestyles. The experience with wine is a search for knowledge of the other by himself.

Understanding a wine about the place of production makes a difference. Italian regions produce different wines, depending on the methods, native grapes, sometimes historical or economic reasons. After all, it is logical that the people, who have conquered and governed part of our country for many years, could “contaminated” methods and styles. We still have the Austrian land registry in Lombardy; why should not we have grapes of French origin or other places? The experience of searching for the Origin.

Wine and Humans

Climate change will also have consequences on the varieties of grapes grown on the peninsula. Nothing is static. In a time of change and speed, it is necessary to remain vigilant, to take note of the past to imagine the future. Another experience of wine that becomes research. After all, who are we? We are pawns of time, of a limited time, and all the more interesting as we manage to be creative and innovative, aimed at a constant goal of improving the quality of life of people and the environment around us. Because they are one consequence of the other, and wine is always there to remind us of it.

Patrizia Marazzi
Italy4golf Italian Ambassador
patriziamarazzi.com