I recently turned 60 and have reached the stage on my journey at which I have learned some things and unlearned others. As I rewind the film, my early disenchantments enable me to sharpen the definition of the stills in my personal album of life. Great wines, my overriding passion, alongside the sentiments, the frames of mind or rather Stati d’anima, as per the title of the cycle of works conceived and created by the artist Annalisa Bollini to serve as a precious extra to this book.

So, pages of life alongside unforgettable oenological experiences – a good marriage I thought. I had been considering combining them in a narration for some time. The wine descriptions you will find alongside anecdotes from my life are not meant to form a rhyming couplet or stem from a precise correlation, at least that was not my intention. Indeed, despite striving to practice harmony, I discovered en route how arduous and subjective it is to tie the array of sensations a certain wine has triggered to other types of emotion.
My experiences reflect no personal rankings or classifications of any kind. They stem from my background as a holy drinker. They are wines, situations and people with whom I have forged a special bond.

My ultimate gratification for this modest work would be for someone to identify with some of my stories or feel reflected in my snippets of experience. Although lives are often dissimilar in form, I do believe many similarities are to be found in the folds of the substance.
Part of the telling of my story is simply a telling of other stories and any hagiographic references merely constitute the inspiration or pretext for more stories.

A handbook on wine that narrates, informs, educates, fascinates, putting order and clarifying a subject so full of symbolic, allegorical, unconscious meanings. In doing so, it aims to become a justified and necessary reference for all those who wish to address the topic with the will to really have the knowledge of what is needed for qualitative and conscious consumption.

Curator: ROBERTO RACCA

Have collaborated in the writing:
Antonio Boco, Giuseppe Carrus, Beppe Caviola, Federico Curtaz, Paolo De Cristofaro, Gianni Fabrizio, Nicola Frasson, Eleonora Guerini, Donato Lanati, Vittorio Manganelli, Alessandro Masnaghetti, Andrea Rea, Gian Piero Romana.