“La terra è l’anima”: revisiting Veronelli, his wines and the stories of the producers

“The earth is the soul”, wrote Luigi Veronelli, editor, journalist and wine critic, who has influenced the world and culture of drinking and eating well in an undeniably profound way. And, as a matter of fact, based on his sentence, the Veronelli family has developed a new project, created because it has been impossible to start any concrete action during the Covid-19 emergency. The project is also a pilot of multimedia formatting; i.e., it is a series of video testimonials by wine producers and not only, who will tell the stories of how Veronelli impacted their lives, what legacy he left and how they have put his sentiments into practice. Therefore, Gino’s family has decided to donate to FISAR, the Italian Federation Sommelier Restaurateurs Hoteliers, a part of his legendary wine cellar, 1500 bottles covering the span of almost one third of the twentieth century (from the sixties to the nineties), which will become the object of a passionate study as well as a critical revisiting of Veronelli’s reviews. The objective is to renew the knowledge of part of the extraordinary Italian wine heritage.
The wine producers are the main players of the pilot project while in the background, Luigi Veronelli and his thought will continue to inspire. There will be many video testimonials, visible for the first time every Monday, for nine weeks, on the Facebook page of Fisar Nazionale or on the website www.fisar.org, including producers, chefs, winemakers and others, such as Elvira Bortolomiol, Romano Dogliotti , Alfonso and Ernesto Iaccarino, Angela Lanzi, Giuseppe Mazzocolin, Arianna Occhipinti and Attilio Pagli.
“The Earth is the soul”, Gian Arturo Rota, curator of the Veronelli Archive stated, “is the umbrella under which we will propose, through various activities, the importance of his vision in the sensory approach, and that is, tasting as research, study, rigor, but also pleasure, and the possibility of infinite expressions, human, social, aesthetic and technical. The donation the family has made to Fisar will let us tell the modern history of Italian wine and, also, symbolically, continue the research work that Veronelli began in the late fifties of the last century and continued for almost 50 years”.
“The partnership between Fisar and the Veronelli family”, Luigi Terzago, the Fisar president,” said “is an enormous satisfaction and donating part of the wine cellar is a privilege for us. This immense wealth of wine culture (as soon as social distancing is over), will be made available to our members with targeted tastings. The project then will include further initiatives that will deepen the vision of the exceptional journalist and connoisseur”.