576,000 bottles will be opened over the four days of Vinitaly until 25 March at Veronafiere, for a total of 2.8 tonnes of cork and 200,000 tonnes of glass. 130,000 glasses will be used.
The four days of the International Wine and Spirits Exhibition sees communication also include unusual aspects, such as the Vinitaly franking that the Italian Post Office (through its branch inside the exhibition centre itself) issues for the benefit of philately fans, not to mention 11,100 followers on Twitter (@VinitalyTasting) or 116,000 likes for the official Vinitaly Facebook page.
And while organic and artisanal wines have by now become “normal”, the first vegan wine producers now hit the headlines. These wines are made without using animal-origin ingredients and are available at Vinitaly from 35 wine producers, including them Le Carline (www.lecarline.com) and Tenute Cerfeda dell’Elba (www.tenutecerfedadellelba.it), intended for a niche market of 800,000 vegans in Italy but which may also interest 4 million vegetarians.
Aagain at Vinitaly, the Francoli Distillery proposes Acquavite&Beauty – beauty creams based on grappa which promise to achieve brightness, firmness, elasticity and silkiness for the skin, as well as combating ageing (www.francoli.it)
Such curiosities are very often the result of cleaver marketing strategies. An example is barrique abitale, a micro-suite with all comforts and optionals designed by the “alberi&case” company (trees&houses) for spend a night in a barrel between the rows of a vineyard (www.alberiecase.it). Similarly, there is also barrique in the bottle: “Pinocchio Barrique Bottle” is an oak bottle that replicates the effects of ageing in the barrel directly in your own home; the project is seeking financial support on Kickstarter”; www.kickstarter.com).
In France, Gerard Bertrand, perhaps the most famous vigneron in the Languedoc-Roussillon area, reassures consumers and markets about the stability of his wines by offering wines with a guarantee of three years for sulphite-free bottles (www.gerard-bertrand.com). Another “big name” in France such as Château d’Yquem has decided to experiment the first “flash sales” on the web (on www.vente-privee.com): a wine lover’s dream come true given the chance to grab legendary wines in the auction at favourable prices.
From the dream of wine fans to the guardians of security: the Military University of Technology in Warsaw has designed a camera that also measures alcohol levels with a laser beam that passes through the inside of the car and calculates the density of alcohol molecules exhaled from the lungs of the driver (www.wat.edu.pl).
Wine is taken by back to streets among the people, on the other hand, by a food truck generally to be seen at street food events in Italy, re-named “Car-à-vin Street Wine”. It is a travelling wine bar on four wheels offering tastings of quality labels at affordable prices (www.coravin.it).
Stying with popularity, while the USA has wine talent shows which are already well-established (www.winewarriors.com), Mediaset in Italy also has one in mind for would-be sommeliers entitled “A Good Vintage”.
Australia is home to the sun cream for grapes. Tyrrell’s Wines (www.tyrrells.com.au), in Hunter Valley, when the sun beats down strongly, grapes bunches are covered with a layer of kaolinite capable of absorbing UV rays to prevent grapes getting sunburnt.
For lovers of wine and accessories, an addition for their collections is undoubtedly “Horn”, the first musical decanter in the world, invented by Riedel and, as the name suggests, is also a musical instrument (www.riedel.com). Serving wine without uncorking the bottle is now possible thanks to Coravin (www.coravin.it), the innovative system that not only does not pull the cork but also retains the ageing of wine left in the bottle – as can be seen at Enolitech, the wine and olive oil production equipment show scheduled alongside Vinitaly.
A major innovation for authentic wine lovers is “Monopoly of Wine-Growing France” – players seeking to become the owners of vineyards in none other than France (www.lafranceagricole.fr), from Champagne to Bordeaux, from Burgundy to Vallée du Rhône.
On the other hand, there are two cult objects to be worn: the wine-coloured denim shirt by Robert Mondavi Winery, a leading Napa Valley company (www.robertmondaviwinery.com), and sunglasses made of wood from used barrels used to refine Franciacorta and Brunello – now turned into spectacle mounts (www.barriqueeyewear.it). They can be matched with Moreschi 1946 Guado al Tasso Brogues, limited edition shoes dyed by hand with marcs and aged with no two pairs alike, packaged with a Magnum of Guado al Tasso 2011 by Marchesi Antinori (www.moreschi.it).
Lastly, Marsala is the colour of the year 2015 chosen by Pantone, the US giant which deals with graphic arts and colour cataloguing and identification technologies (www.pantone.com): identification code “18-1438”.
