Mattarella: “Unwarranted protectionism would significantly damage wine and oil”

“Food resources, in times such as these, with war on the borders of Europe, acquire even more value. We have seen this relative to wheat in the dispute over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. New clouds, meanwhile, seem to be gathering on the horizon, bringing unmotivated protectionism, market closures with an incomprehensibly autarkic flavor, which would do major damage to such excellent sectors as wine and oil. Producing for self-consumption would lead Italy back to the agriculture of the early twentieth century. Legitimately, producer associations express concern about the fate of exports. Measures such as those being threatened would, moreover, give further impetus to so-called “Italian sounding” products, with further consequences for Italian production chains, as it is unimaginable that consumers on other continents would give up heartily to chase after tastes they have come to appreciate. Trade and interdependence are guarantors of peace. In history, pitting hostile markets against each other has led to other, more serious forms of conflict. Open markets produce a dense network of collaborations that, in the common interest, protect peace. Ladies and gentlemen, you are part of what Italy can offer today with its excellence. Witness the vitality of its civil society and productive forces, and institutions must stand by your efforts and work. Thank you for what you have done and are doing to qualify the Italian presence in the world”. This was said by the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella, addressing the audience of producers and industry representatives, with Ministers of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida and Culture Alessandro Giuli, at the “Forum of Oil and Wine Culture” No. 44 promoted by Bibenda & Fondazione Italiana Sommelier (Fis), under the direction of Franco Maria Ricci, at the Hilton Cavalieri, today in Rome. A concrete testimony to the great importance of agribusiness for Italy, and which in wine and oil has its leading products - in 2024 it recorded an all-time record in exports, with more than 69 billion euros, with extra virgin olive oil driving the growth in value, and with wine being the top item with 8.1 billion euros, according to final Istat data, an overall economic contribution to the Belpaese of more than 45 billion euros a year and an added value of 17.4 billion euros, or 1.1% of GDP, thanks to more than 300,000 companies and as many people employed between supply chain and allied industries - but which, in an increasingly complex geopolitical scenario, are threatened by the tariffs promised by US President Donald Trump against the EU. President Mattarella to whom, Fis donated an olive tree, which will be planted in the Tenuta di Castel Porziano, as a symbol of life and longevity. And of peace, Mattarella himself reminded.
“I thank you for the invitation to a Forum that presents itself of great interest”, President Mattarella opened his speech, “it is an opportunity to debate the excellence of our productive experience, the growth of professional skills that have accompanied it. It induces us to look at the road travelled so far. A road of continuous and growing assurance of high quality. Those who are no longer young remember the sad methanol affair almost 40 years ago, with victims, permanent disabilities, many intoxicated. Government and Parliament intervened decisively then, modifying protection rules, but it was mainly those in the sector who became aware, and whose actions - with oenology having become a science - have ensured the image and prestige of the wine sector. Yours are sectors that are aware of how much the commitment to quality, with the wholesomeness of food, benefits Italian agricultural sectors, increasing the value of production, opening markets abroad, winning wine and oil, in particular, the responsibility of representing, in the world, a way of being Italian. Contributing to the same demand for Italy in the world. Agribusiness, today”, Mattarella reiterated, “alongside culture, design and technology, constitutes a vehicle and attraction of the Italian way of life. Italy is the world’s second largest producer of olive oil, exports are worth about 3 billion euros. As for wine, with a value of bottled wine that, in 2024, exceeded 14 billion euros; with an export of almost 8 billion that, for 90%, is expressed in quality designations. You know these figures well: you are protagonists in them. I want to emphasize the significance of these positive trends, because they are summed up in the quality event. Supply chains, therefore, that bring together territories, knowledge, professionalism, sustainability and healthiness, marketing skills and thus realize an intangible value that goes beyond insiders, consumers themselves, generating common goods. Vital elements for communities burdened, often, after World War II, by the phenomenon of land abandonment. Hence also the value of recovering life for the rural and inland areas of our country. To produce means, in fact, to inhabit a place, to care for it”, Mattarella urged, “this is a merit of great importance for those who devote themselves to it. Among them, women entrepreneurs, young people who look to the countryside as an opportunity, cooperative structures, often serving the wine and olive oil supply chains. The development you can be proud of occurred because you had the ability to lead innovation, which is so important in agriculture. You have been able to put yourselves together, to measure yourselves against the growing international dimension, without fear of previously unknown markets in which, today, Italian products are leaders. The future is not built by living on nostalgia. It would also apply to gratuitous temptations of food nostalgia: today's foods are certainly healthier and more controlled than they used to be. Advances rarely happen by accident. They are, rather, the result of intuition, study, determination, commitment, and the ability to operate by working as a system. Agriculture is no exception. And, if today we can speak of a “PDO economy,” we owe it to the modernization choices made at the dawn of the Republic and the birth of the European Communities”, Mattarella recalled. It is estimated that PDO products, food and wine, are worth around 20 billion euros (20% of the entire agri-food turnover), a large part of which feeds export currents, half of which, in turn, are directed outside the European Union. We know that our Constitution is the only one of its time to devote an article to the primary sector and the conditions necessary to promote its development: article 44. The 1957 Treaty of Rome that gave birth to what was then called the European Communities, in Article 39, set for the continent’s future agriculture, the objectives of: increasing agricultural productivity; ensuring a fair standard of living for the agricultural population, with improved income for those who work in agriculture; stabilizing markets; ensuring security of supply; and ensuring reasonable prices for consumers. Thus agriculture became - and remains - an engine of European integration - not a rearguard element to be subsidized - being, on the contrary, a key to policies, as well as productive ones, aimed at safeguarding the health of consumers and promoting the territories and the populations settled in them. The results of those policy choices are there for all to see: Italy is the first country in the European Union with agricultural products expressly indicated as deserving protection: 856 can avail themselves of this shield. The results are also relevant on the social level. Figures speak of 330,000 people employed in the wine sector, 110,000 employed in the olive oil sector. It is easy - according to Mattarella - to point out who is responsible for all this: it is first and foremost the farmers, directly engaged in running their businesses. I would like to add, however - I mentioned cooperative experiences - also the associative element of the Protection Consortia. There are more than three hundred of them, promoted by the operators, who play a crucial role in the management of indications of origin and quality, guaranteeing the protection, wholesomeness, promotion and enhancement of products that represent Italian excellence, both nationally and internationally. I would like to add the experience of the territories and the abilities to represent it. I would like to continue by referring to the insights that have guided this process. Earlier, Angelo Gaja (whose speech below, ed.) mentioned the name of Paolo Desana, a senator of the Republic, promoter of the law that, in 1963, initiated the protection of wine appellations. Desana, - an Italian military intern in the German concentration camps for refusing to join the Republic of Salò after September 8, 1943 - was an expression of Monferrato - a land with an outspoken wine vocation - and the protagonist of a parliamentary battle that defined the legislative framework, later summarized at the European level. Desana was, likewise, the one who propitiated the first organic reflection on hill areas in the postwar period, with the national conference convened in Cerrina Monferrato in 1955. To his action and figure tribute should be paid - Mattarella added, speaking then about the territories - vines and olive trees characterize a territory. More should be said. The olive tree, in particular, has designed - and characterizes - an entire civilization, that of the Mediterranean. A symbol of peace, of serene longevity compared to the impatience of the present. A territory first and foremost preserves its diversity. With regard to agriculture, the richness of biodiversity should be recalled. We are also helped here by our Constitutional Charter, in Article 9. Angela Velenosi reminded us (whose speech follows, ed.): oil cultivars are closely linked to the territory, to the protection of its vocations. With these cultivars cultural peculiarities and knowledge are handed down, knowing full well that it is necessary to be able to face the challenges of the times. One thinks of Xylella, of the climate changes that afflict agriculture. Today no one dares to underestimate or even deride these dangers anymore. It used to happen in past years. Innovation is not the enemy of agriculture, on the contrary. The value of safeguards together with innovation is decisive: there is, from time to time, the temptation to take shortcuts, to overcome safeguards, seen as impediments, as nuisances. It is the opposite. It is the close link between safeguards and innovation that produces progress. A typical product, olive trees, vineyards, for example, are more today than just an agri-food fact for an area. They characterize it. All the more so in a country, like ours, of a thousand countryside, of a thousand typical productions. Mario Soldati - recalled Mattarella - who left us a little more than twenty-five years ago, a singer of the relationship between landscapes, men, women, houses and farmhouses, vineyards, and food, emphasized for wine - but it can apply to any quality agricultural production - that it can be tasted and understood only when one enters into confidence with the environment where it was born. It cannot be a detached and abstract object, separated from its place. This is the reason for the new fortunes for places of production, which are affected by attentive and demanding tourism. This is the sense of the additional supportive contribution that wine and oil offer to their chosen territories and their people”, Mattarella concluded.
In thanking him for the great honor of his presence at Forum No. 44, the “deus ex machina” Franco Maria Ricci, who, for as long as he can remember, embodies the role of a brilliant “animator” of the Italian wine world, for which he has done so much (since the early 1990s, ed.), even today that he is at the head of Fis, one of the world’s greatest centers of wine culture, and the Worldwide Sommelier Association, recalled their meeting “at Luiss on July 2, 2018, also there for a wine conference. She on that occasion took note of my words and I remember that she gave me a smile to assent to the concept of great culture that we were celebrating. An ancient culture, that of oil, wine and the products of the Earth. Thank you for being here in the heart of a school of higher learning that teaches this culture to young and old. Every day of the year you have done this with millions of people as you turn 60 years old in this 2025. You have done us the honor today of joining this Foundation by offering us as a gift a strong signal of adherence to our commitment. Thank you”, Ricci reiterated, “today, to the words of wine and oil from two distinguished producers, I add thanks to the Lord and to the Earth that gave them to us. And with admiration I think of the work of the women and men, many present here, who make Italy the richest country in the world. He would have been 100 years old today, Luigi Veronelli. We owe it to him, to his will in 2004, to build a major course on extra virgin olive oil. For 21 years our classrooms have been talking about Italy’s oil, a precious food for health and pleasure. Our thanks for being there alongside the Minister of Agriculture, convinced as he is of the road we are taking for young people, for farmers, for producers, for Italy. And that we felt convinced that Italy must introduce in schools the teaching of the products of the earth. The oil producers present, and we who tell the story of oil, thought of donating an olive tree, which will be planted in the Castel Porziano Estate, a symbol of life and longevity. It is a 100-year-old leccino, immune to Xylella. It is the remembrance of this day for all of us who have been fortunate enough to be beside our President, whom we esteem and admire for the gift of his life that he dedicated to our Italy. In short, Mr. President”, Ricci concluded, “it is my duty to make you listen to the words of oil and wine so that you can protect our commitment that we carry out with all the love we can, and I wish you to always drink the best bottles with the people you love.
Words such as those of Angela Velenosi, “lady of wine” at the helm of Velenosi Vini, among the most important companies in the Marche and Abruzzo regions, and a producer of oil as well, who said how “it is a real privilege to be a spokesperson in a context such as today's for one of the excellences of our Italy, and to briefly represent how much richness can be hidden inside that bottle of extra virgin olive oil that shows up on our tables every day, considered, however, by most consumers a foregone presence, not imagining that behind those drops of oil that meet our food can be hidden a richness that goes beyond the collective perception of the simple condiment. Olive oil has its roots in Greek civilization and is still today a symbol of quality and health, as confirmed by recent research. It is no coincidence that the word oil in ancient Greek, is the basis of the words economy and ecology, two concepts closely related to olive oil production. This food is not only a product of economic value”, Velenosi said, “but also an emblem of the balance between man and the environment, an element that embodies sustainability and respect for biodiversity. The olive branch represents peace and coexistence. The Mediterranean Diet of which olive oil is the undisputed protagonist is much more than just a dietary pattern, it is a philosophy of life, an example of wisdom in daily living. This food nourishes the body, but it is also a symbol of conviviality and connection with the land. It is no coincidence that olive oil is one of the elements that distinguishes the Mediterranean landscape, characterizing entire regions with its centuries-old olive groves and defining the identity of many places. In recent years, the protection of biodiversity has become increasingly important, so much so that in 2022”, Velenosi recalled, “Article 9 of the Italian Constitution was supplemented to explicitly include the protection of biodiversity and local traditions alongside the safeguarding of the landscape and historical and artistic heritage. The environment is no longer considered as an object, but as a primary, constitutionally protected value that must be safeguarded with respect to future generations. This regulatory update emphasizes the importance of preserving indigenous olive varieties, traditional cultivation techniques, and knowledge related to olive oil production that represent an invaluable legacy for future generations. The guide to extra virgin olive oils reflects the variety and richness of ragional cultivars. For a country like ours, launching a project based on the meeting of environmental aesthetics and economic growth in the olive sector will not be difficult, as Italy, unlike many other nations, can already count on a great olive biodiversity and a unique ampelographic panorama, with more than 538 varieties surveyed, territories highly suited for excellent productions and for a high number of recognitions that well cover 42 PDOs and 8 PGIs. The added value in the Italian system represented by products with Geographical Indication celebrates not only the excellence of Italian olive production, but also promotes a broader awareness regarding the connection between product quality and their geographical origin. In terms of production, Italy, with its 619 olive-growing enterprises, 4,327 active mills, maintains its world-class position, both in terms of production and export, with a significant figure of 359,000 tons in 2022”, Velenosi added. “These figures unequivocally confirm the predominant role that Italy plays in the international extra virgin olive oil scene, reflecting the continued excellence and expertise of the sector. That is why olive oil also plays a crucial role in the Italian economy. Italy is the world’s second largest producer of olive oil. In 2024 alone, the value of exports was 3 billion with a growth of 45 percent over the previous year. The sector involves more than one million hectares of cultivated land and olive trees and directly and indirectly employs hundreds of thousands of people from the cultivation stage to marketing. Italian olive oil exports are an important item in the growth of agribusiness exports, with key markets such as the United States, Germany and Japan. However, the sector also faces challenges. One of these is certainly counterfeiting and the phenomenon of Italian sounding, against which it is essential to strengthen policies to protect and enhance the national product”, Velenosi urged. “Consumer protection policies and anti-fraud regulations play a crucial role in defending not only the market, but also our culture and the quality of our daily food. When consumers are unaware of the differences between different types of olives, fraudulent practices become more prevalent. The second challenge is the phytosanitary challenge to which Xylella has recently exposed us. Olive oil is often associated with its health and nutritional benefits, being antioxidants and fatty acids, beneficial to our bodies. However, it is also a product to be discovered in terms of sensory and taste. The bitterness, the spiciness, often considered defects by the consumer as a format, are actually indicators of freshness and richness in polyphenols, essential components for the beneficial properties of the oil. It is therefore an invitation to rediscover the pleasantness of these characteristics, appreciating extra virgin oil not only as a condiment, but as a true protagonist that can transform and enrich any dish. Integrating extra virgin olive oil into the daily diet can therefore be a valuable support to maintain and promote health at all ages. In summary, the concept of olive oil quality goes far beyond simple commercial classification. Respect for the environment, enhancement of local olive oil, and attention to the sustainability of the entire production process all contribute to an excellent end product. In this scenario, I offer a provocation”, Velenosi said, “the introduction of the oil card in restaurants, just as happens with wine. Each dish deserves to be enhanced with the right oil, chosen according to the variety of olives, origin and its organoleptic peculiarities. This would make it possible to educate consumers about the diversity and richness of olive oil, enhancing the value of quality production and strengthening awareness of the importance of this extraordinary product in our diet and culture. Mr. President”, Velenosi concluded, “oil has all the characteristics to be the protagonist of the gastronomic scene. We just need to work on communication, to make it perceived more and more as a health food, to teach it to those in the industry, to enhance it and to present it in relation to the traditional dishes of every place in Italy”.
And this is the mission of the FIS, as Daniela Scrobogna, president of the Scientific Committee of the Italian Sommelier Foundation, recounted: “we are gathered here today in great numbers to honor and celebrate olive oil as a great expression of Italian excellence, which is flanked by another great product of the earth, which is wine, also pure Italian excellence. But how to properly communicate these two works of art? Understanding and culture are the only tools that enable us to grasp their value. In this we are helped by the school, a school that claims its strategic role, sometimes underestimated, a school of life that is a custodian of the past, but reaches out toward the future. That school that has the great task of educating in cultural formation, which more generally contributes to individual and collective development. The oil and wine sommelier school of the Italian Sommelier Foundation”, explained Scrobogna, “provides, in addition to all this, the skills and knowledge necessary to understand the world of these two splendid products. It develops critical thinking, the ability to deeply analyze these two foods that are part of our centuries-old food and wine tradition in order to then and throughout life make free conscious choices. The school of the Italian Sommelier Foundation also offers the opportunity to develop one's passions, indeed to create some of them, and aspirations, turning them into job opportunities, giving those indispensable tools to compete in the job market. Many of our students today are oil and wine sommeliers with precise skills and innovations, including drawing up the oil list in restaurants. Present, then, in catering, this might seem obvious, but it is not, as it takes prepared and attentive catering to meet the needs of the customer. Therefore, many are sommeliers who have opened wine shops, wine bars, acts to spread the vast wealth of knowledge acquired over time, enabling many young people to enjoy this cultural aspect”, Scrobogna pointed out. “Over the years, it has even happened that many people have changed their profession in favor of sommellerie, as they were thunderstruck by the beauty behind this world. So many excellent communicators are capable of appropriately influencing choices and attitudes, and many are present in companies as a trait d'union between producer and consumer. So many roles, however, that have one common denominator, passion and respect for oil and wine. The school of the Italian Sommelier Foundation therefore contributes to preserving historical memory and transmitting the great cultural heritage that is the basis of oil and wine production. To achieve this goal, we have never spared ourselves in searching for excellence, to propose to our courses, aware of the strategic role of quality oils and wines. This has required careful selections, targeted tastings that have allowed us to come into contact with splendid productions, of small and great artisans, sometimes unknown, which with great enthusiasm we have supported and promoted, making them known to our students and to the world of food and wine, also thanks to the strategic contribution of the Bibenda guide that has given concreteness to these relationships”, Scrobogna reiterated. “It has been many years that for both the oil and wine courses we have been carrying out programs aimed at the search for quality and culture. We started when quality oil was not yet being talked about, imagining it properly paired with food or bottled in orcels or elegant containers was pure science fiction. We had to structure a course to learn about oil, learn how to test it, recognize any defects, and for this we were inspired by that of wine. With great humility we studied, worked, challenged ourselves and grew with our students, day after day, seeing in their eyes the amazement in learning the beauty of this world and the awareness of being part of it. Programs that in addition to the ability to taste and extinguish our senses range in the knowledge of the various territories, the different cultivars and grape varieties, the pioneers who have made the history of the most diverse traditions, the various processing systems, the technology at the service of production, exalting those peculiarities that allow the sublime production of Made in Italy. A path that allows us today to arrive at matching both wine and oil with food in the most correct way. With great competence we could summarize our mission in three A’s: tasting, analyzing, pairing - said Scrobogna - all this is possible, however, thanks to the fundamental role of the teacher, a key figure in the learning process in which he must with his passion and preparation create a healthy and stimulating environment for the student, capable of transmitting therefore the hedonistic and cultural vision of the world of oil and wine that slowly creeps into the mind of the student, who remains fascinated by this vortex of beauty. To see in the eyes of the pupils at the end of the course the gratitude, but above all the flame of interest, passion and culture is one of the most rewarding experiences a teacher can receive. The students, as soon as they finish our course”, Scrobogna concluded, “are like little raindrops, a light drizzle, new, almost insignificant drops that drain away without wetting, but all these drops together can become a torrential rain that bathes, floods and overwhelms. They will be the ones to change the distracted and encounter approach toward oil and wine, aware of their great value, make them landmarks of their own culture and lives. Beloved President, we have already been doing this for several years and our lives have been enriched with rewarding sensory and emotional experiences that fulfill us and make our world better”.
From the tale of oil to the tale of wine, “I am privileged, because I would never have dreamed of speaking one day in front of the President of the Republic and this audience of political personalities, entrepreneurs producers of oil and wine, and sommeliers”, said Angelo Gaja, the “artisan” of Italian wine par excellence, one of the most admired Italian producers in the world in his “excursus” on Italian wine, “but this happens only in Rome, and every time there is the Forum dell’Olio e del Vino, edition no. 44 of the Italian Sommelier Foundation who are sowers of culture. I have given a title to my talk, “The journey of Italian wine”, but I must be brief, because if I had to describe it all, weeks would not be enough. In the last 70 years there has been an evolution in the world of wine, everywhere in the world, not only in Italy, extraordinary and incredible, profound changes, of innovation and evolution, in the vineyard, in the winery and in the market, which I have been fortunate to witness, having started working in the winery in 1961, and having lived through them for over 60 years. It’s not that I understood everything, but I learned a lot from this extraordinary journey of Italian wine. But let’s go back, to the 1950s-1960s: there were also some quality wines being produced in Italy by small artisans, but the vast majority were banal wines, bottled in 2-liter flasks and flagons that we exported. We were adrift, and we needed a shot in the arm. And we had the good fortune to have a senator like Paolo Desana, originally from Casale Monferrato, who started the DOC project, and supported it for 20 years despite disagreements due to different interests, with the goal of arriving at their recognition with the framework law 930 of 1963, with the first wines coming out on the market in 1966, Brunello di Montalcino, Barolo and Barbaresco”, Gaja recalled, “but in which direction did we want to go? Instead of as was done before with wines that mainly carried the varietal name, but we did not know where they came from also because of the blends, we wanted to tie the varietal name to the place of origin, to the territory. It was an ambitious project that took time, and it took time to accomplish. Because it was to enhance, to protect, the indigenous and historical varieties. These wines that were being produced were referred to by the Anglo-Saxon world as “cheap & cheerful”, low priced and of modest quality, something we wanted to overcome with Docs. But again the Anglo-Saxons accused us of confusion because compared to the French, who only had Doc, we wanted to have two recognitions with also Docg, and they wanted to know with what guarantee. But we were able to correct this confusion and be appreciated for our productions. At that time in Tuscany, which was even then producing excellent bottles of Chianti, but there was a mass that went into the fairly mundane fiasco, where sometimes up to 40% white varieties such as Trebbiano were used, brave people wanted to restore dignity to their land.
In 1968 the first Sassicaia came out, in 1974 the Tignanello, wines made from international varieties, Cabernet and Merlot in this case, that expressed a high level of quality, but with always the Anglo-Saxons telling us that they could not fall under a controlled designation of origin, and that although they judged them better and paid a higher price, instead we called them table wines: they then became the Supertuscans, but it took 25 years to make them fall under an Igt, which came into force in 1994. What has Italy demonstrated? That it is capable of working on two tables - and we are recognized everywhere - that of indigenous varieties and that of international varieties. This is a wealth of Italy built over 70 years and which today represents an extraordinary heritage. Slowly we have realized that indigenous varieties are our “Golden Reserve”, they are our “Fort Knox”- urged Gaja - and that is where we have to draw from, because there is no country in the world like Italy where there are vineyards everywhere, in all regions, over 300 indigenous varieties that give different and surprising wines: it is an extraordinary wealth. It took time to understand this, but today we are aware of it. Because they make our country a “treasure chest of beauty” to which we winegrowers have also contributed for years and from generation to generation, from the sea to the mountains, although normally indigenous varieties are able to express high levels of quality in the hills, because the vine also needs lean rather than super-rich soils, and finds excellence in the vineyard.
What do we need to do now? Learn to marvel at this beauty that we have: Italy is a treasure chest of beauty, and marvel helps us to understand that we must conserve, protect and preserve this landscape, an incredible heritage everywhere. And where vineyards originate wines of place, and we are now recognized around the world that the strength of Italian wine lies in producing wines from these indigenous, historic, local varieties that express the identity of each region. On the other hand, with regard to the market, and the foreign market in particular, we have all worked a lot, starting from a very low level, and trying to grow the recognition and appreciation of Italian wines, and I have never seen such a clear, definitive and absolute recognition on the average quality of Italian wine that has risen enormously, as it has today, thanks also to those who have organized so many events outside Italy. There was a time when even journalists used to tell me that I was only looking abroad: this is not true, because Italy is my target market”, Gaja explained, “where I have to be able to place the wines in the premises, where the bottles are drunk and appreciated. But abroad is a huge market, and there is also the pride of bringing Italian style to it, and the necessity, because we have an important production, less than half consumed in Italy, and the rest abroad where we have to be able to build demand. Building it first of all has been the medium-large wineries that have done an extraordinary job in opening up foreign markets. Then there are the micro artisanal wineries: there are more than 30,000 wineries in Italy, 80% of them are medium-small and with a turnover under 1 million euros. And they are a huge and creative asset, which should not be covered with bureaucracy, because they have an extraordinary function, because they are the dream of even educated individuals who live in the city, but who want to go to work in the countryside and start their own production, and no other product like wine knows how to take the stage. These small wineries and their wine artisans enthuse many young wine tourists, even from the city, and the market, you know, thrives on novelty. The small ones have the function of initiating the passion and knowledge of young people who live in the city and do not know the Italian province toward the industry, in short. We are in a time of great challenges: to deal with climate change we must have a daily readiness to adapt in the vineyard, in the winery and in the market. We must strive to learn to read the present with the eyes of tomorrow not yesterday, as you said, Chairman, with creativity (and I am also thinking of Artificial Intelligence). Of course we need the eyes of yesterday to understand the mistakes we made, but we have to face the future and we have every chance to do so. It takes this courage. Wine is an extraordinary cultural drink, it has a depth that no other alcoholic beverage in the world has, it has roots that go into humanity, landscape, history, philosophy, culture, tradition, religion. It’s not easy to condense all this into a message, but we will also have to balance it, because we have to help people understand it, but also that you have to drink it with measure, with common sense, with awareness, I don’t like moderation. And we also need to be aware that there are countries like Asia and like Africa, where new frontiers are opening, slowly but maturing, because vineyards are being planted there. Countries that are not competitive, but they are increasing wine knowledge. The ambition of these people who are also planting vineyards where it has never been done before is, in fact, also to express their identity pride through wine as well, and so the culture of the locals also grows, which then, of course, are also open to other wines. Where should we look for our future? To young people”, Gaja concluded, “women and men who are prepared, who know languages and who know how to use all possible tools, and who are in the world of wine and who will be able to surprise us because we believe in them. They have the chance to gain space in foreign markets and carry the Italian flag high. It is up to you to go down this road. Finally, I also want to say something about olive oil: the olive tree has incredible beauty, and here again young people will be the future with their courage to plant new cultivars after Xylella, and to carry the Italian flag high thanks to oil, together with us wine producers”.