Transforming Sagrantino into art: Bernulia converts the wine symbol of Caprai into “visual imprint”

Translating the magic of wine into art: as a landscape, nature, scents, colors, seasonal nuances, history, traditions, and people, in addition to the product itself. This is the goal of Giulia Bernardelli, aka Bernulia, an artist whose project “Impronta del Sagrantino”—four ephemeral works—was unveiled today at “Vinitaly” in a vernissage—and to whom the Arnaldo Caprai winery has entrusted the task of representing Sagrantino di Montefalco with a new language. The artist - who has previously signed works for Pirelli, the Washington Post, the New York Film Festival, Disney, Armani, Pixar, Barilla, Lavazza, and many others - has poured the experience of tasting four labels into a “visual imprint” signed Caprai, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Montefalco Sagrantino Docg.
With the help of a creative composition that plays with natural elements, colors, materials, and scents to create a sort of visual “identity card”, Bernulia creates a new language that manages to transcend the conventional pictorial representations of goblets, bottles of wine, bacchanalia, and Bacchus. All of Bernulia’s creations vanish after they are finished because they are always made from natural or edible materials. “These qualities, tells Marco Caprai, seemed ideal for us to visually and artistically depict our Sagrantino and its complex personality: wine, like nature and food, is temporary because it is meant to be consumed. Last but not least, wine is also art, and our cellar has always been linked to this world, primarily with the Caprai4Love project”.
Bernulia’s artwork - who after graduating from Fine Arts in Bologna began collaborating with important international companies and who keeps only a photographic shot of each of her creations, before erasing its traces - aims to express the distinctive personalities of each label by attempting to capture the basic organoleptic expressions of the various DOCG terroirs, as well as all the charm of the landscape in which they are located and the people who animate them. “For Arnaldo Caprai - says Bernulia - I wanted to represent and express my personal vision of Sagrantino, its history, and the territory. Thanks to a fascinating initial tasting done together with the sommelier Daniela Scrobogna, who provided us with a whole series of visual, olfactory but also artistic suggestions related to the four protagonist wines - Collepiano, 25 Anni, Spinning Beauty, and Valdimaggio - In a year-long journey that changed over time, I tried to express this complexity through very different compositions”. For the Arnaldo Capri winery, to which we owe the rebirth of Sagrantino and the Montefalco area - a bet won by Marco Caprai, who by reinterpreting the ancient vine in a modern key through the most innovative methods of production and company management has managed to conquer the favors of the public and critics from all over the world - the bond with the art world has always been strong. As with the “Caprai4Love” project in support of social and territorial sustainability, which since 2013, thanks to the sale of limited-edition wines, has allowed the restoration of various works of art visible at the San Francesco Museum in Montefalco.