An Italian wine for Macron: the Pope gifts the French President a bottle of Amarone Aneri

An American pope, a French president and an Italian wine: Leo XIV gifted Emmanuel Macron with a bottle of Amarone della Valpolicella Aneri during an audience at the Vatican, which the French president attended together with his wife Brigitte. The bottle is a personalized limited edition featuring a drawing by Mimmo Paladino, one of the artists of the Transavantgarde movement, as also reported by Luciano Ferraro in “Corriere della Sera”.
This was the first time the two met in person; in the past, during the pontificate of Pope Francis, the president had traveled to the Vatican on three occasions. Precisely to celebrate the good relations between the Holy See and France, the chosen gift was the bottle that Giancarlo Aneri, the “king” of Amarone della Valpolicella and owner of the family winery in San Pietro in Cariano, who was named a “Gentleman of His Holiness” by Pope Francis on 2024, October 5th - entrusted to the Transavantgarde artist Mimmo Paladino. For the Aneri brand, Paladino designed three artistic labels for a limited and exclusive edition of Amarone bottles to mark the first 25 years of the history of the Veronese winery.
Among the gifts Macron presented to the pope, there was, among other things, a French national basketball team jersey signed by the men team. “Very happy to meet His Holiness - Macron wrote on his X account - we share the same conviction: in the face of the divisions of the world, action for peace is both a duty and a necessity. France will always work for dialogue, justice and fraternity among peoples”.