Consorzio del Vino
Brunello di Montalcino®

A TILE MADE BY 5 DIFFERENT ARTISTS TO CELEBRATE THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF THE BRUNELLO "DOC" DESIGNATION

 

20/02/2016

Sandro Chia, Bertozzi & Casoni, Pino Deodato, Gian Marco Montesano and Mimmo Paladino

sign the celebratory tile for the 2015 vintage

 

The “Leccio d’Oro 2016” awards were also assigned to Ristorante Del Posto in New York, to RISTORANTE IL CONVIVIO TROIANI in Rome, as well as to the MOLESINI wine shop in Cortona and to the wine shop ENOTECA DEL MONOPOLIO LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario)

 

Montalcino, 20 February 2016 – The number 5 is a recurring number this year at Benvenuto Brunello: 5 like the stars assigned to the 2015 grape harvest, 5 like the artists of international renown called to make the celebratory tile for the 2015 vintage, 5 like the decades that have passed since that distant 28th March 1966, when the “DOC” designation of origin was granted to Brunello di Montalcino, one of the first wines in Italy to obtain this prestigious acknowledgment.

 

The artists involved in the project are Sandro Chia, one of the leading members of the Transavantgarde art movement, wine producer in Montalcino and symbol of an experience that includes, all-round, visual arts and the wine-making art; Pino Deodato, for his ability to interpret the values of a geography that becomes an expression of art, as wine production is in its own way; Bertozzi & Casoni, masters in reproducing on their ceramic pieces bright flowers, fruit, food and symbolic animals; Gian Marco Montesano, for his investigation into memory and history, like cultivating something that comes from far away and never germinates by chance; and, last but not least, Mimmo Paladino, for his ability to tell an ancient story rooted in a territory, but in a completely and absolutely modern way. 

 

The task of devising and developing the project was assigned to Enrico Mattei, an art critic who is the curator and founder of the management firm Vehicle Projects. “The vine, grapes and wine are always present in works of art – explains Mattei. The truly essential element of this project is not so much wine as representation, but instead the creative ability of an entire local community. A complex set that teams up with and that, finding a real opportunity for celebration, participates in the creation of something unique, which in this case is Brunello. Oscar Wilde once asked himself whether fog actually existed before Whistler and Turner painted it. It is the artists who are able to make certain phenomena visible to others. If it is the artists who “invent” the geography and universe of the wine, the wine and its universe, associated with five works by great artists, present themselves as a geographical and cultural creation, tied to the Made in Italy sector”.

 

The result of the artistic project was collected in a catalogue by Enrico Mattei and Paolo Antognoli, which contains documentation on the event as well as historical bits on the Consortium and on the artists.

 

This morning, the Leccio d’Oro 2016 awards were also assigned. These awards are given by the Consortium to venues with a Wine List featuring a wide and representative range of Brunello and other wines from Montalcino. “This year, there were two joint winners for the Restaurant and Wine shop categories – commented the Chairman Fabrizio Bindocci. The awarded venues, all of extremely high quality, perfectly represent the recognisability of the Brunello “brand” in Italy and abroad, and embody the ultimate goal of the denomination”.

For the Restaurant category, the joint awards were assigned to RISTORANTE DEL POSTO in New York and to IL CONVIVIO TROIANI in Rome, while for the Wine shop category, the awards were presented to ENOTECA MOLESINI in Cortona and to the Canadian ENOTECA DEL MONOPOLIO LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario).

 

The panel that chose the venues to be awarded was made up, as usual, by the Chairman of the Consortium, Fabrizio Bindocci, and by the members of the Executive Committee, Patrizio Cencioni, Bernardo Losappio and Francesco Ripaccioli, as well as by the experts Allan Bay, illustrious food and wine journalist and writer of the "Vivi Milano" column for the newspaper Corriere della Sera; Faith Willinger, food and wine connoisseur and author of books on food for the U.S. market, and Antonello Maietta, Chairman of the Italian Sommelier Association (Associazione Italiana Sommelier - AIS).