Barolo “Italian City of Wine”. Viticulture as driving force for the territory’s economic recovery

The slogan the “capital” of the Langhe territory and the first “Italian Wine City”, has chosen for the entire year of 2021 is: “Barolo 2021. Infinite tale”. The initiative has been promoted by Wine Cities and sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, and will bring activities, events, exhibitions and conferences to the Langa, mainly in Barolo, but also in the other villages of the Langhe and Roero, whose Viticultural Landscapes have been registered among the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, since 2014. The companies will be able to take the projects left behind in 2020 and start a series of activities that will definitely affect the cultural, social and economic fabric of the territory, starting with winemaking, the driving force of revival. This is the reason why, together with the events, the focus is also on commitment and scientific research, narration and creativity, the search for new communication language, the development of models and services aimed towards the community, the benefits of which will last a long time.
The Wine Museum, WiMu Barolo, will, therefore, play a decisive role. The Swiss set designer, François Confino, designed the WiMu, it is housed inside the Falletti Castle, and for the entire year 2021 will be a privileged observatory and control room for the new trends underway in the Italian wine world. The scientific committee of the WiMu will establish a permanent workshop of ideas and analyses in Barolo, which will host seminars, forums, conferences, presentations of studies and surveys with a historical or economic background. The Italian Wine City will become the leader of an intense and varied network of topics and institutions to imagine the future of small villages, city-countryside dialogue, the rural story, farmer civilization and the next environmental challenge.
The three key words around which the Barolo Italian City of Wine 2021 initiatives will rotate are memory, community and future. Memory, because the Langhe are, first of all, a limitless treasure chest of testimonies and patriarchs, ancient faces and gestures, echoes and literary symbols. Community, because before being Barolo wine, it is a country, made up of its people. Future, because in 2021 a long reconstruction and a general reconfiguration of models and lifestyles is expected to begin, starting from agricultural and land management practices as well. “Two of the main appointments scheduled concern language and the environment. We will develop them with particular reference to wine, but the message goes beyond that. We must start again from the centrality of the history and our place in the world; the latter conceived as a man-environment equilibrium, if we want to obtain more suitable tools to face the enormous emergencies on our planet”, commented Tiziano Gaia, who coordinated the work on the Barolo 2021 candidacy dossier and collaborates with the WiMu.