April 2006 - Magazine Wine Enthusiast (by Monina Larner) - Theenthdegree - With WineNews founders Alessandro Regoli and Irene Chiari. New hounds, Web-based communication counselors and Italy’s most powerful husband-and-wife team ...

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For Italy’s wine elite, each morning starts off with cappuccino, brioche and a few clicks on www.winenews.it . Started in 2000 by Tuscany-based journalists Alessandro regoli and Irene Chiari, the site has become a formidable force and the Italian wine community’s point of reference for headline news. Image-conscious producers obsessively log in to find out who’s hot and who’s not.

Wine Enthusiast: Who are the producers you know log onto your site on a regular basis?
Alessandro Regoli: I am sure about Piero Antinori, Angelo Gaja, Gianni Zonin, Marco Caprai, Gianni Masciarelli, Jacopo Biondi Santi and enologists Carlo Ferrini, Riccardo and Renzo Cotarella. The Sicilians are huge fans, especially Donnafugata’s Giacomo Ballo, Lucio Tasca of Tasca d’Almerita and Diego Cusumano. If anyone has truly understood the terroir of the Internet, it is Sicilians. Italy’s two historic wine regions, Tuscany and Piedmont, are light years behind.

Wine Enthusiast: Some observers would characterize you as the most powerful couple in Italian wine thanks to the popularity of your site. Do you see your-selves as such?
Alessandro Regoli: We are not powerful, the instrument we use - the Internet - is powerful. Irene and I have worked in the wine business for 20 years and we know a lot of people... Fundamentally, we are good communicators.
Irene Chiari: Wine should also be credited. Second only to the fashion industry, wine and food represent the best of Italian creativity.

Wine Enthusiast: Thanks to the items you post and the reader polls you publish, you not only report news, but create it.
Alessandro Regoli: I suppose that’s true. For example, when Wine Enthusiast releases its list of top 100 wines of the years, we list the Italian winners. You can be sure the Italian dailies have published the news the next day.

Wine Enthusiast: You also create and publish reader polls in partnership with Vinitaly, Italy’s top wine trade fair held each April. Tell me about these.
Irene Chiari: We do them all the time. We ask our readers to respond to questions such as: Who are the most influential people in wine? Who are the best-looking people in wine? Which wines would you drink with your spouse, versus which would you drink with your lover?

Wine Enthusiast: Which wines won?
Irene Chiari: Sparking wines for lovers and red wine, especially Amarone, with your wife.

Wine Enthusiast: You carry two cellular phones and they ring incessantly all day with tips, gossip and news. More than a journalist, are you a wine confidant?
Alessandro Regoli: I answer all calls, even the unlisted ones, because I’m too curious not to.

Wine Enthusiast: : Can you share any gossip with us?
Alessandro Regoli: You can only release gossip when you can confirm the gossip, and by that point it is published on winenews.it.

Wine Enthusiast: Describe one of your days at the Vinitaly trade fair.
Alessandro Regoli: Because we walk, walk and walk the fair we have a mobile office and send stories out of the press room. But in is the busiest time of the year for us and out little team of about five or six people post up to 15 breaking news stories per day, which is about double our normal workload.

Wine Enthusiast: Does it help that the world of wine is so small?
Alessandro Regoli: So small? The world of wine is huge. There’s so much information to cover: the vintages, the people, the vineyard crus. ... Wine is an immense universe.

Monica Larner