From the querelle on the CMO Promotion to Vinitaly 2024, Agriculture Minister Lollobrigida

From the querelle on the CMO Promotion to Vinitaly 2024, where the Ministry will mix politics, culture and cinema with wine, from the value, not only economic, of wine, to the role of consumers, who are first and foremost people and citizens: many are the points of interest touched upon, from the Minister of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, whom we met in recent days, in Rome, in the events signed Vinitaly, which first brought the representatives of Italian wine in audience with Pope Francis, and then staged the conference dedicated to “The Economy of Francis and the World of Italian Wine”, at the Italian Embassy at the Holy See (which saw the interventions of Riccardo Cotarella, president Assoenologi, Lamberto Frescobaldi, president Unione Italiana Vini (Uiv), Daniela Mastroberardino, president Donne del Vino, Minister of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, and with the Bishop of Verona, Monsignor Domenico Pompili, introduced by Veronafiere president Federico Bricolo and moderated by Bruno Vespa, journalist, writer and wine producer.
On the discontent with the way the national call for promotion CMO was handled, with so many appeals to the courts, Minister Lollobrigida said, “the Ministry offices are working to spend everything, looking for the fairest ways within the rules, and confronting us with the supply chain. The funds will not be shifted to other measures: those for promotion go to promotion, and in any case it would not be the first time that the entire ceiling is not spent. Our goal is clear: the resources that are spent must bring concrete and tangible results”.
Nonetheless, Francesco Lollobrigida reiterated, wine is an industry that must be safeguarded for a thousand reasons, and from many attacks. “Quality is a given, moderation is the right way of consumption, despite the fact that some people still argue the opposite, saying that we should not drink at all. We have to tell the story of wine, the aspects of caring for the land: therein lies the link with the balance recalled in the Economy of Francis. One thing struck me, of what Pope Francis said, which is a theme close to my heart: he challenged the transformation of man into consumer. We are not consumers”, Lollobrigida stressed, “but we are people, citizens, and then also consumers: we have the capacity for discernment, and the contestation to our model of development, which wants to standardize everything, is the great enemy. Wine is just that, it is based on quality, it is part of a conviviality that also nourishes the spirit. It is man who sculpts the land, creates environments that counter hydrogeological disruption, and in addition, where there is no agriculture there is depopulation, there is social degradation. It is this wine that we want to promote. We need to boost quality to drive up prices, which are still too low in some areas. But if you explain quality, value grows”.
“Around the world”, Lollobrigida continued, “we are looking for alliances: at Vinitaly 2024 (April 14-17, in Verona), we have organized, in collaboration with OIV, an event that will bring together the Ministers of Agriculture who founded the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV), and those of many other countries, to discuss how to protect and enhance wine, a family jewel, which then trails behind all agribusiness. And then we will again bring art and culture, as we did in 2023, but also many exhibits from the Lungarotti family's Wine Museum in Torgiano, to tell the story of wine, and then a project that tells the link between wine and food through cinema, together with Cinecittà. And something very much related to technology that talks about the future ... but that we will unveil later”.