Vinitaly is the most important wine fair dedicated to Italian wines, to which about 4.000 winemakers take part every year. One day before Vinitaly begins, a much more exclusive wine event takes place: Opera Wine, at which only 100 Italian winemakers can exhibit, only the best 100.

Compared to the long-living fair Vinitaly, which is now at its 50th edition, having been first organized in 1967, Opera Wine is a newborn event, since it’s only at its 5th edition in 2016.

Yet, it is already a very important event because of the quality of the exhibitors and of the reputation it quickly gained, also thanks to its international recognition.

It is organized by the same Vinitaly and other important local institutions, like the Italian agriculture ministry and the Exhibition Authority of Verona, with the contribution of what’s probably the most renowned wine magazine in the world: Wine Spectator.

The event’s formula is as simple as that: which is the most widespread and eminent wine magazine for English-speaking readers? And which are the best 100 Italian wine producers according to it?

So here’s Opera Wine, the “opening event” to Vinitaly at which the best 100 Italian winemakers, chosen by Wine Spectator, exhibit.

We could say that Opera Wine is a distillate of Vinitaly, and indeed its audience is also restricted: entrance is allowed on invitation only and the program includes a light lunch and the taking of a group picture with the 100 greatest winemakers.

According to Wine Spectator, the Italian wine makers that deserves to exhibit at Opera Wine 2016 are:

Agri Punica

Allegrini

Altesino

Argiolas

Arnaldo Caprai

Avignonesi

Mascarello

Banfi

Barone Ricasoli

Bellavista

Bellenda

Bertani

Bibi Graetz

Binomio

Bisol

Braida

Bruno Giacosa

Ca’ del Bosco

Cantina Terlan

Carpineto

Casa E. Di Mirafiore

D’Angelo

Casanova di Neri

Castellare

Castello di Albola

Castello di Ama

Mazzei

Castello di Volpaia

Cavallotto

Ceretto

Cesari

Cusumano

Damilano

Di Majo Norante

Donnafugata

Drei Donà

Elena Walch

Elvio Cogno

Falesco

Fèlsina

Ferrari

Feudi di San Gregorio

Fontodi

Tedeschi

Frescobaldi

Gaja

Galardi

Gianfranco Fino

Pra’

Hofstätter

Ippolito

Jermann

La Tunella

Le Macchiole

Librandi

Lini 910

Livio Felluga

Lungrotti

Lunae

Maison Anselmet

Marchesi Antinori

Russiz Superiore

Masciarelli

Masi Agricola

Masseria Liveli

Massolino

Mastrobernardino

Mastro Janni

Medici Ermete

Nino Negri

Odoardi

Ornellaia

Petrolo

Pieropan

Planeta

Poderi Aldo Conterno

Re Manfredi

Renato Ratti

San Felice

Sandrone

Paolo Scavino

Schola Sarmenti

Siro Pacenti

Suavia

Tabarrini

Tasca

Tenuta di Nozzole

Tenuta il Palagio

Il Poggione

Sassicaia

Tenuta Sette Ponti

Tenute Dettori

Terre Bianche

Terredora

Tommasi

Tormaresca

Umani Ronchi

Valdicava

Vietti
Zenato

Everyone of the 20 Italian region is represented at Opera Wine, although not equally.

The region with the lower number of exhibiting winemakers is Lazio, which can boast only one producer among the best 100 (and it’s Falesco, with its Lazio Montiano 2011). On the other hand, the region with highest number of admitted winemakers is - as one would expect - Tuscany, with its 29 producers.

Opera Wine is going to take place on April 9th 2016 at the Palazzo della Gran Guardia in Verona, in the famous Piazza Bra, just in front of the Arena.

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What does eating slow means

Slow Food is nowadays a global movement that aims to make people appreciate and choose “true food” from local producers.

It was born in Italy - and more precisely in the blessed region called Piedmont, where they grow Nebbiolo grapes that eventually become Barolo and Barabresco bottles, and where they seek after precious white truffles of Alba -  in the middle of the Eighties, that is when all over the world the fast-food trend was booming.

Its name, indeed, is SlowFood in Italian language, too, as the association wants to stand in opposition to fast-foods’ culinary and the gastronomical globalization they require, as well as the related consumption of low-quality food made with low-quality, cheap ingredients, the abandon of local culinary traditions and products, and the growing unsustainable food provision.

What does wine have to do with the Slow food movement?

In the last 30 years or so, the movement grew and went beyond Italy’s boundaries and the area of mere food, so that, nowadays, it operates in more than 100 countries, including USA, and focuses on wine, too, promoting cultivation and consumption of autochthonous and/or locally grown grape varieties.

Slowine is the name of a magazine published by Slow Foods that talks about local, forgotten excellent products and tells the stories of proud and strong winemakers that everyday chose to chase a quality and fair production.

Recently, some small Italian winemakers, representing the Slow Food wine making philosophy, made a tour in United States, to bring people’s awareness on “clean” wine making and small producers.

Slow Wine 2016 world tour

It’s the fifth time this annual tour takes place.

Between the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016, some selected winemakers from Italy and the editorial board of the magazine went through San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin and New York (it was actually a kind of World Tour that brought them in Asia and northern Europe, too).

To get into SlowFood wine guide, a winery can’t only produce wines that are good at taste, they must be good in a wider sense. To say it in Slow Food’s words, they must be good, clean and fair. This means that winemakers that step into the guide work their vineyards respecting soil and environment, use traditional techniques (something that, for the sake of truth, is pretty common among quality Italian winemakers, regardless their general care for environment), and that defend the biodiversity of grape varieties.

Indeed, almost all the listed producers are certified organic and biodynamic, and those who are not still show great responsibility towards environment and final customer, as Slow Food certifies by visiting winemakers at their cellars (not tasting wines from bottles they receive for tasting panels, like many tasters do when reviewing wines for other guides).

The only tour stop open to consumers was the one that took place in New York on February the 3rd, while the three former ones were reserved to journalists and wine traders.

Some argued that not allowing simple wine lovers to wine tasting is a strange way to promote the consumption of a particular kind of wine among people, and that talking about the importance of getting slow, local and environmental-friendly while touring the world with about 50 winemakers from another continent is pretty weird, too.

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The 25th of December has become an occasion to spend time with beloved person - usually gathering around a sumptuously decked table - even in countries where they don’t celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, so let’s figure out what Christmas represents in Italy, where they basically “invented” the Christmas meal, or - at least - take it very seriously.

Strange but true, even if Italian Christmas culinary traditions are rich, various and deep-rooted all along the boot-shaped peninsula, Italians are surprisingly inadequate when it’s about to elect a wine to be traditionally consumed at Christmas.

How can it be?

Remember, Italy is the country of variety. This makes a cornucopia of gastronomic treasures of it but also an unbelievably disunited country under several points of view.

“Cenone” and “Pranzo di Natale”: before and after the holy night

The main distinction in Italian Christmas traditions consists in the time of the same Christmas meal.

In southern regions they use to have a rich dinner - they call it “cenone”, that literally means “big dinner” - with fish and seafood dishes on December 24th, after which the gathered family goes out to attend the Mass at midnight.

In the northern regions, on the other hand, they traditionally have a sumptuous lunch on December 25th, usually consuming filling pasta and meat dishes. They simply call it “pranzo di Natale” (Christmas lunch) but it’s far from being as inoffensive as its name suggests.

Every region, every town and basically every family has its own traditional Christmas menu, usually composed of local traditional dishes, prepared every year according to particular, family recipes, that are handed down from one generation to another. This means that wines consumed on Christmas can vary a lot from area to area, with the only common peculiarity of being of a superior quality than usual.

In Piedmont they uncork Barolo and eat “ravioli del plin” and braised beef, while in the area around Verona they drink Amarone with risotto and game.

By Rome they can make a toast with some high quality Grechetto, while grated scallops fill the room with their attracting aroma, and by Naples glasses are filled with Falanghina, Greco di Tufo, Fiano di Avellino and Biancolella, while dishes are full to the brim with mussels, spaghetti with clams and codfish.

Happy Christmas (meal is over)

Once the meal is over - be it the dinner or the lunch - Italians have present, “globalized” traditional desserts.

They usually already have had local traditional Christmas desserts, like struffoli in Naples (fried small pieces of sweet dough kept together in a donut shape with honey and candied fruit) and presnitz in Trieste (a cake of Austro-Hungarian origin made of a sort of phyllo dough filled with a troubling quantity of dried fruits and liqueur), but at the very end of the meal they have a slice of one of the two most representative Christmas cakes: panettone (originally from Milan) or pandoro (from Verona).

Both these two cakes can nowadays be purchased in supermarkets for a few euros (even if the artisan ones produced in bakeries and pastry shops are still far better products) and are sold every year in tons.

Together with these cakes, for some still inexplicable reason, Italians drink sparkling wines.

All I want for Christmas is bubbles

Although Italy produces great sparkling wines that can be enjoyed throughout the meal, be them champenoise methods from Franciacorta or Prosecco di Valdobbiadene and Asti Spumante made by Charmat-Martinotti method, Italians (at least, many of them) seem to lose their minds on Christmas, and they pair them with panettone and pandoro.

Asti Spumante is a sweet sparkling wine that is traditionally drunk at the end of a Christmas meal more or less all over the country, thanks to its sugar contents, that makes it go just barely decently with cakes. Its bubbles still make the pairing appear like a forced marriage, because neither pandoro nor panettone are fatty enough to stand up to them.

As an alternative, some kinds of Prosecco are also popular, because this sparkling wine is bottled in three different kinds, according to its sugar remains, and the so called “dry” version can contain up to 32 grams of sugar per liter, which makes a pretty sweet wine of it.

Unfortunately, the marriage with panettone and pandoro is not happier than the one made by Asti Spumante, but it doesn’t seem to stop Italians from perpetrating this barbarity.

Moreover, some also insist in pluming their papillas by pairing desserts with brut, non-sweet, sparkling wines, too.

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Amarone is one of the great wines from Veneto, a wine region in northern Italy. We know this region well because it produces Soave and Prosecco, respectively a white dry wine and a sparkling wine.

What’s famous about Amarone is its curious vinification process, that basically consists in producing a sweet straw wine and then forgetting about it until it’s not sweet anymore.

What is Amarone made of?

As it happened with Soave, there isn’t any “amarone” grape variety: it is a blend of local indigenous varieties. Amarone is mainly made of Corvina Veronese (which is also called simply “Corvina” or “Cruina”), which must be the main percentage of the blend, with a share included between 45% and 95%.  The second variety is Corvinone, another autochthonous grape variety from Verona, that can replace Corvina for not more than the 50%. Finally a percentage of Rondinella is also allowed between 5% and 30%. Useless to say, Rondinella is another local autochthonous variety.

Where is Amarone produced?

Amarone comes from another area close to Verona, yet different from the one of Soave. Grapes from which it is made are grown to the north of the town, in a subregion called Valpolicella, which is enchanting as well.

There actually are different subareas in the subregion of Valpolicella:

- Valpolicella classica, which is told to be the most ancient and renowned one, in the municipalities of  Fumane, Negrar, Marano di Valpolicella, San Pietro in Cariano, Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella;

- Val d'Illasi;

- Val di Mezzane;

- Valpantena;

- Val Tramigna;

Valpolicella area stretches from the Garda lake to the province of Vicenza, to the south of Lessini Mountains.

This gives the area a mild, sunny and pretty dry climate, especially if compared with the one of other areas of the same region.

Which are the main Amarone production guidelines?

Apart from the already mentioned grape varieties, small amounts of different ones are also allowed, but they all must be red, non-aromatic varieties traditionally grown in the area. Grape Bunches are selected for producing Amarone and left to dry on dedicated lattices and pressed only when the sugars and flavors have concentrated in grapes; this takes about three-four months and the grapes lose about 40-50% of weight.

Then, fermentation process can start. It is slow and long lasting, to allow the yeasts transform all the sugars into alcohol. If no or a little (1.1 gram per liter) sugar is left, Amarone can be left aging for at least two years, although many producers use to let it age for a longer time.

What is Recioto della Valpolicella?

As it happened with Recioto di Soave, which was a sweet wine made from the grape varieties used to make Soave dry wine, Recioto della Valpolicella is a sweet wine made from the same grapes used to produce Amarone. Yet, the process went backwards, with Amarone. It is said that the traditional local wine of Valpolicella was Recioto, the sweet one, but that one day someone forgot a cask of wine in the cellar, and that when it was found, a long time had passed, so that all the sugar turned into alcohol. They decided to taste it anyway, and they found out it was even a better wine, a “great, bitter one”, that’s what the word “amarone” means.

With which dishes should be paired Amarone?

Traditionally enjoyed with game, roasted and grilled meats, casseroles and well matured cheeses and excellent with hearty dishes. Amarone’s distinctive flavor compliments new and exotic sweet and sour dishes. It is therefore also perfect with

Asian and middle-eastern dishes. Amarone is also a wine that could be consumed alone and tasted in tranquility . Italians have an expression for this kind of wine, it’s “vini da meditazione”: wines you should stop and meditate on.

Suggested Producers:

·  Allegrini

·  Cesari

·  Tommasi

·  Zenato

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