Angelo Gaja: “compare wine to spirits is an abuse that has lasted too long”

At this point, it is a best practice to compare wine to spirits and cocktails only due the alcoholic content that they have in common. It is an abuse that has lasted too long. There are three different types of alcohol. Fermentation alcohol, which remained unchanged for 10,000 years, since wine arose, produced by yeasts settling on grapes, agents of alcoholic fermentation, and, it is the result of a process which is the most natural, the most organic overall. The alcohol obtained in this way is the main, as well as primordial, component of wine, and it goes along with a 3% of other components, the remaining part is water. Distillation alcohol, produced by the enrichment of alcohol through distillation implantation. It is the result of the desire of the wine producer to realize a higher alcoholic content, and make the beverage enter into the category of spirits: during distillation, a good part of other wine components is lost. Addiction alcohol is that intentionally added for the production of cocktails and similar ones making use of the pure distillation alcohol, totally deprived of wine components in an adequate percentage, and mixed with water, coloring substance, flavorings. Even if the molecule is the same, nature and alcohol function present in wine, spirits, and cocktails make them completely different. It is not about establishing hierarchies or foster the competition among different products, but only to offer the maximum clarity to users”. It is the speech by Angelo Gaja, the “artisan” of Italian wine for excellence, one of the most admired Italian wine producers to clarify a crucial crux for Italian culture that is exported in the world, and makes Italy a model of “good living”, i.e. the tradition of the table connected with the Mediterranean Diet – considered to be the best in the world – of which also wine is part of it, which, consumed during the meals, and with moderation, is not only a perfect pairing for food, but also a “means” of conviviality and sociality, and to explain our territories for the bonds that it has with their history, nature, and with their communities, but, which, today, has to confront with the new health and restrictive regulations about the communication and alcohol consumption, which increasingly more Governments of different countries want to implement in the policies for public healthcare (and, with the proposals of Eu Commission for the review of Beca-Beating Cancer Plan, while, in Italy, a drop in consumption after the come into effect of the new Highway Code is registered).
“Make people believe that wine, spirits, or cocktails consumption is comparable, or only also similar – restates Angelo Gaja – is misleading and incorrect exactly for the purposes and different modalities of consumption. With the ongoing demonization of alcohol, the confusion becomes strongly penalizing. It is necessary to ask producers, communicators, consumers to fight, until the image of wine is separated and is perceived in a different way compared to that of spirits, cocktails, and similar: and, that, to bring the project forward is up to the association of producers, which, in their name, include the word wine”.
“No other beverage produced in Western has the cultural importance of wine: which plunges its roots in humanity, history, culture, landscape, tradition, religion”, concludes Angelo Gaja, recalling how “already Noah, in the Genesis, once the deluge finished, and once he descended from the Ark, planted first of all the vine because one could enjoy wine as food, and to party in the company of others”.