The Town of Colle Val d'Elsa has organised the first edition of "Vino Arte Cinema" (not difficult to translate it in english as Wine, Art and Cinema) , a little wine tasting event that is at the same time an exhibition of some of the most representative forms of art of our little town in the heart of the Siena province. The event has been hosted by the "Teatro del Popolo" (again easy in english : People's theatre) , and this has given the chance of playing a short movie titled "Slow Food Story" , that naturally is half-way between a movie and a documentary about the slow-food concept, very important in the Chianti area, where good wine and good food represents a very industry.
During the event a selection of local wines and also wines from all the italian regions were availablefor tasting . Many wines from tuscany of course, but not only from the Chianti area : actually there were many interesting wines from other part of tuscany.
For istance the Fattoria di Sorbaiano, from Volterra, offer a very nice "Rosso delle Miniere, that is made with Sangiovese 60%, Malvasia nera 10%, Cabernet Franc 30% :
In the picture below, you can see the glass used for the tasting. The glass is made by RCR , the world leading company realising crystal glasses . RCR is also one of the sponsor of the event and it's a partner of Green Engineering in the spirit industry .
And of course crystal scultures. In fact, Colle Val d'Elsa is know as "the city of crystal" , because here a hundred years tradition on crystal making leaded to the industrial reality of RCR and also many other high-skilled company working in this field .
In the picture below, a beautiful crystal sculpture of a horse, that is also the symbol of the town of Colle Val d'Elsa .
An other amazing crystal sculpture shown , was the crystal chair designed by architect Duccio Santini and realised by Duccio di Segna :
And a beautiful crystal heart, again designed by Duccio Santini and realised by Duccio di Segna :
At "Vino Arte Cinema" i also met my friend Beppe Pandolfo, production manager at "Distillerie Bonollo" and also responsible of the ANAG (national association for grappa tasting) for the Siena province. The Distillerie Bonollo are based near Siena and produce a very wide selection of Grappa from San Giovese and other kind of grapes .
Finally i spent about half an hour at the booth of "Lombardi e Visconti" . This company is specialised in the production of herbal liquors, and the selection presented at "Vino Arte Cinema" was really nice . At the booth i had a long chat with the owner, Aurelio Visconti, that knows everything about alcoholic maceration of aromatic herbs . In all the italian regions there is a strong and old tradition in herbal liquors, born because of the monks that used this process to extract active compounds useful as medicines .The many hermitages all over the centre of Italy , usually build among greenwoods, helped to diffuse both use and production of herbal liquors, so that thousands of recipies have been created. Most of them have been forgotten in the loneliness of the hermitages, but it is comforting to know that sometime a new company reveals these secrets, creating new products , putting it in a nice, modern dressing, and forcing again into the market. Maybe helped by some innovtive bartender? We will see ...
