For lovers of Italian wine, specialist importer Vinotria has created a special offer of 1 bottle in 6 free on all orders over R1000 for the June month to celebrate the event.
The special, which includes free delivery to major centres, will only be valid while stocks last, so please visit www.vinotria.co.za to see the fantastic selection of Italian wines that are available in South Africa. Use the coupon code 2JuneItalyDay on checkout and take advantage of last year’s exchange rates. The offer also applies to mixed cases and extends to wines that are already on special on the site.
Vinotria, which started in 2011 as a partnership between Roberto Bottega of Idiom wines and Pedro Estrada Belli of Belbon Hiils, is now one of South Africa’s leading importers of premium Italian wines and grappas. “We are proud to import and distribute a portfolio of 250 wines from 50 benchmark producers and make these wines available to the local market. With the end of two months of lockdown coinciding with the Italian National Day, we thought we’d make our portfolio of wines available through our new website. The regional maps help make the site educational and we’ve also tried to tell some of the stories of Italy’s important wine families. Our goal is to cover the major Italian wine regions as well as introduce some of the less well known ones. When people think of Italian wine, they generally think of Tuscany for Chianti Classico and Brunello or Piedmont for Barolo, Barbaresco and top quality Barbera from Asti and Alba. Yet the Veneto region is probably Italy’s most commercially successful region, thanks to the combination of the worldwide success of Pinot Grigio, Prosecco and the appassimento style Ripasso and Amarone wines from the Valpolicella area near Verona and Lake Garda. Friuli has some of the country’s best white wines made from blends of the Friulano grape grown on the Colli Orientali hills of the Julian Alps, while Verdicchio and Pecorino from the Marche and Montepulciano and Trebbiano wines from Abruzzo are becoming more mainstream. Puglia, which is the region in the stiletto heel part of Italy’s boot, now makes top quality Primitivo in Manduria and Salento. Campania and Sicily are making exciting volcanic whites and reds and Vermentino from Sardinia is the summer wine of choice,” says Bottega, who together with Estrada Belli, has travelled to Italy three to four times a year since the project began to gain as much knowledge as possible.
Italy was the first European country to go into full lockdown, as the world watched how the virus spread from Wuhan in China to red zone hotspots in Northern Italy. Only recently were Italians able to enjoy their first meals out in more than two months, as bars, restaurants and cafés reopened in what Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte described as a ‘calculated risk’. Many theories abound as to why that part of Italy was hit so hard. These range from the ageing demographics to the high number of Northern Italian factories doing business with China to the potential superspreader event that took place when the Atalanta football club from Bergamo moved its Champions League match to the San Siro stadium in Milan so 40,000 extra fans could attend the game. Atalanta won 4-1 and wild celebrations ensued supposedly infecting many people in both Milan and Bergamo. Finally, after 32,000 deaths, some semblance of normality is returning and the vino is flowing again, albeit slowly.
“The producers we represent have also had it tough, as many markets closed their borders to Italian products given the shocking images of the outbreak. But online sales and deliveries through wine shops and stores in Italy continued throughout the lockdown. In Italy, wine is considered as essential as food. It is definitely not a sin to consume wine, especially if done at mealtimes and in moderation. It aids digestion, it is a fundamental component of the ‘Mediterranean diet’ and it is very much part of the fabric of Italian society,” says Estrada Belli, who grew up in Rome before relocating to Cape Town more than twenty years ago.
“Which wines do I recommend from our portfolio?”, repeats Bottega rhetorically? “If I had to choose a few special wines, I’d have to say Gianfranco Fino’s Es – an old vine, bushvine Primitivo di Manduria that is a masterclass in balance, and often voted as the number one wine in Italy according to the cumulative scores of the Italian wine guides. This has to be near the top of the list for a special wintery occasion. In South Africa, we have Platter’s but in Italy there is Gambero Rosso, Veronelli, Luca Maroni, L’Espresso to name just a few, so when a wine scores highly across all the major guides for a number of years, it’s time to pay attention. We also have some older vintages of Lungarotti’s old vine Rubesco Riserva Vigna Monticchio from Umbria, another regular Top 3 wine, while LIvio Felluga’s Terre Alte and Abbazia di Rosazzo white blends have been crowned best white wine in Italy a number of times.”
“We are fortunate to have some great names in the Vinotria portfolio. Tasca d’Almerita from Sicily is Wine Advocate’s European Winery of the Year in 2019, the first time this honour went to a Sicilian producer. They make super wines from Nero d’Avola and Nerello Mascalese from Etna. Donnafugata, our other Siciian producer, has the most vivid labels on their bottles to complement their increasingly elegant wines. We have super Brunello from Talenti, Donatella Cinelli Colombini and Fattoria dei Barbi, excellent Chianti Classico from Castello di Volpaia and Badia a Coltibuono, and some outstanding vintages of SuperTuscan wines from Frescobaldi’s Ornellaia and Luce projects. When it comes to Barolo and Barbera from Piemonte – we have wines from VIetti, Ca’Viola, Enrico Serafino and Braida. But overall, Zenato from the Veneto gets my vote for consistently well-made wines across all price points. Prosecco is important and we have 10 different proseccos from Friuli, Treviso, and the Conegliano Valdobbiadene and Asolo crus from producers La Delizia, Pasqua, Bellenda and Giusti”, adds Bottega. “We aim to carry both the top wines and the best value wines from each producer where possible. This way we can introduce South African wine lovers to the wonderful world of Italian vino.”
Visit www.vinotria.co.za or email info@vinotria.co.za for more information or specific recommendations.
Vinotria’s showroom is located at the Idiom’s Tasting Centre in the Helderberg Basin.
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We also take the opportunity to share this dramatic e-book with images of Italy’s abandoned squares during the lockdown, as well as the following message from the Italian Ambassador to South Africa, Hon. Paolo Cuculi,
“This year, the COVID-19 pandemic does not allow us to celebrate Italy’s National Day worldwide, as we would have loved and were used to.
Notwithstanding the impossibility to host a proper reception, I am glad to share with all the distinguished South African Authorities, Colleagues, Friends and Italian Fellows the links to the e-book “(In)visible Squares”, an overview of 20 among the most beautiful Piazze in Italy, portrayed over the last two months of lockdown by Italian prominent artists.
https://www.esteri.it/mae/resource/doc/piazze_in_visibili/piazze_in_visibili.pdf
https://www.esteri.it/mae/resource/doc/piazze_in_visibili/piazze_in_visibili.zip
Those squares are all empty, as the health emergency required, and somehow deprived of their main historic function as spaces created to facilitate and promote socialization.
Indeed, as the Italian author Italo Calvino wrote in his book “Invisible Cities” (that inspired this collection), “whenever we enter into a square, we are in the midst of a dialogue”.
The architectural beauty of these monuments – that remains unspoilt, even in the absence of people – is a testament to the richness of Italy’s cultural heritage.
My most sincere wish is that you may soon be able to visit and fully enjoy them in person again. In the same vein, I look forward to having Italian officials, tourists, entrepreneurs and scientists back to South Africa in the nearest future, thus contributing to further enhance the already excellent political, economic and cultural relations between our two great Countries.