On Sunday there’s Cantine Aperte: 4 million Italians (and foreigners, too) will visit over a thousand of the nation’s vignerons
Year 2008 number 1
On Sunday there’s Cantine Aperte: 4 million Italians (and foreigners, too) will visit over a thousand of the nation’s vignerons
No less than 4 million Italians will lay siege to the nation’s wine producers during the course of the 16th edition of "Cantine Aperte" (“Open Cellars”), which will take place on Sunday 25th May. This is a highly popular event that allows consumers to get to know the world of wine "from the inside". They learn where and how the most famous wines are produced, as well as those that they drink every day.
The event will represent a renewed surge of confidence in Italian producers after the spread in recent weeks of rather less than edifying news about some of Italy’s most celebrated wines.
The moving force behind the development and promotion of "Cantine Aperte" is the Movimento del Turismo del Vino, a non-profit association that numbers over 1,000 wineries all over Italy among its members and which, since it was founded in 1993, has sought to promote the culture of wine by encouraging people to visit the places where wines are actually produced.
“Our objective – explains the association’s President Chiara Lungarotti – is to open up the doors of the wineries throughout the year: to facilitate access to the places of production so that consumers can get to know personally wines, their producers, their terroirs and the environment from which they come and from which they derive their particular characteristics. With this aim in mind, we continually try to create and support new initiatives that promote a different, more intelligent and knowledgeable kind of tourism. If dubious marketing campaigns and unscrupulous producers – adds Chiara Lungarotti, referring to the recent events that have shaken the Italian wine trade – have undermined the credibility of a sector that is as fundamental for our country’s economy as that of wine, the Movimento feels that producers have an even more pressing duty to open up the doors of their wineries. In this way people can see that the vast majority of Italian producers are serious and work with passion and dedication, making products of high – and guaranteed - quality”.
In the Veneto, (info: www.mtvveneto.it) a large number of special appointments have been planned, including dinners with producers, cultural events at wineries, exhibitions and theatrical performances. In some cases it will even be possible to make tours of the vineyards on board a special little train, on motorbikes or in vintage cars.
