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Siena online beats Florence, with its Palio, wine and Saints

In the trip section of Google searches for the word Siena beat Firenze. But in e-commerce wine dominates all with tuscany wine and tuscany wine tours

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The keywords that are most searched regard hotels and apartments or trip instructions. Information regarding things to be seen also attract the online reader with the Duomo in one of the first positions thanks to its historiated flooring, the largest in the world, and also thanks to the recent opening to the public of its lofts – la porta del cielo – from where it is possible to admire the inside of the cathedral. In the midst of words that are really connected to the city appears the car Fiat Grand Siena that in 2013, thanks to a publicity campaign created an authentic increase in interest regarding this name especially in Brazil and Argentina.

The most expensive restaurants around the world

From Scattidigusto, a preview, images and descriptions of the dearest restaurant ever, which is about to open in Ibiza: Sublimotion

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It will be inside the Hard Rock Hotel in Playa d’en Bossa in Ibiza and it resembles a tropical aquarium where the table and walls change colour becoming, sky, grass, a royal hall…. All for 1.600€ per person. The experience proposed by the chef Paco Roncero, is multi-sensorial with images, aromas, music which changes with every course immerging the diners in a virtual reality only for millionaires. A similar proposal, even though more expensive, from Ultraviolet in Shanghai, based on the same concept of being immerged

totally in sensations set off by food.
It is surprising how the pleasure of food is developed as something to be enjoyed alone and with an absolute concentration on ones own senses. In other words exactly the opposite to what we have always thought, and that food was an experience to be shared, for socializing something to be experienced, enjoyed and commented with others as if it were something adhesive among people. Another thought regards the price which seems to be created to generate exclusivity, because << Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing >> said Oscar Wilde.

Extra virgin olive oil, scandals, curiosities and fame

He too was there, the famous Tom Mueller, author of the book Extraverginità. The sublime and scandalous world of olive oil, at the dinner for charity during Eataly

Seen for you by Marzia Morganti Tempestini

A dinner which took place in Florence organized by Oscar Farinetti with the Frantoio Santa Tea to collect funds for the Meyer hospital.

A person with light and serene eyes, slat and pepper hair, and an Italo-American accent. To the question asking about the coincidence of the Times having publicised his book which was being presented at that same time at the Camera dei deputati, he smiled and said how on the day of the presentation he found himself, through no fault of his own in an embarrassing situation, “when I saw the sketches I wanted to die” . Never had he received so many phone calls from protesting producers surprised by the article throwing dirt at our extra virgin olive oil.

It is true that until a few years ago, regardless of the fact that Italy was the second producer in the world with about 480 tonnes in the last year,

regardless if a decrease of 8%, one spoke of oil only during the autumn during the period of picking and pressing the olives. Today thanks to the many events to divulge the green gold from Italy it is talked about and promoted in other moments during the year and especially in places where once there was no land apt for olive trees. In Trieste where the Olio capitale was organized by the Camera di Commercio, Confcommercio and Città dell’Olio, Boris Pangerc tells us, he is a junior secondary school teacher, poet and olive grower, Mayor for ten years of the Comune di San Dorligo della Valle, when the decided to participate with their municipality in the Associazione Città dell’Olio planting 1500 olive trees, he and his friends were called visionaries and more so still when a few years ago they decided to organize the first edition of Olio capitale. During the seventh edition, just concluded, the exhibitors were 300 and the visitors more than 10,000 coming even from the nearby Croatia.

While wine substitutes beer in English pubs, I’ll take you for a tour

There is a decrease in beer and an increase in wine in English pubs, a change of style but no damage to their charm, so here are those that must absolutely be seen

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The beer kingdom, the pubs where traditionally the Her majesty people go alone to pass a night in front of a blonde pint, playing darts and watching a football match. Just there in those pubs the beer monopoly has just ended, and wine is becoming more and more important, especially the new ones. A study carried out by CGA Strategy and divulged by Unione Italiana Vini explains the present British HORECA situation: beer 47%, wine 18%, spirits 22%. As we can see beer is still going strong but things are changing, because as this is decreasing wine is on the up.
Some wine goblets next to beer pints but this doesn’t really take away any of the charm of these very British locations. Below you will find a list of the pubs that are a must, if you come back from the UK and you’ve not been there it means you’ve been somewhere else. The choice has been made by “visit Britain” The Blackfriar; London has been labelled a Unesco world heritage site.This is practically a myth in art nouveau with walls covered with mosaics, bas reliefs and sculptures. It is in one of the oldest parts of London.

What type of wine lover? Choose your profile

A semiotic square so as to understand what rapport you have with wine. The choice is between radical, enosnob, Pane al pane (call spade a spade) and socialite

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With Vinitaly all sorts of surveys arrive but this one is really intriguing. The Istituto Squadrati di Milano has created for the Cantina Bosco Viticoltori, a “Quadrato semiotico” or rather a schematic diagram which permits us to give wine lovers a profile.

This scheme has 4 corners, the different wine lovers are:
– RADICAL: those who put genuine products in front of everything else
– ENOSNOB: for those who consider only high quality wines
– PANE AL PANE (call a spade a spade): those who consume daily
– SOCIALITE (lovers of social occasions): wine is part of the movida and they like spending time with others.
Along the square sides there are 4 referring concepts in contrast with each other: sacred and profane, nature and culture, and on the inside of the scheme there are indicated 23 commonplaces which correspond to the deep rooted convictions in each group of consumers. Following their logics it is easy to understand to which quarter of the square one belongs.

She buys the wine for every day; he buys the wine for parties

Men spend more and choose the wine at a restaurant, women are more careful of prices and buy mostly at the supermarket
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The survey is by WineNews who, for Vinitaly, every year proposes news regarding the gender diversities in wine consumption. It was just this Alessandro Regoli’s blog that in 2010 revealed that men find sexy those women who know how to taste wine.

Here is the 2014 novelty: the buying profiles, “ant “ for women” and “grasshopper” for men just as in Aesop’s fable.
He spends while she is careful. She fills the trolley at the supermarket buying mostly wine for daily consumption (85% of cases) while he buys more expensive bottles for special occasions (92%) which he gets in wine stores. This information confirms the statics from the market research societies, who say that women shops for wine practically only in department stores (74%)

Garage Chateaux, small producers of great wines

London Cru has put the spotlight on a new trend, the urban wineries – garage wineries with small artisanal productions of excellent wines

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Forget about the granddads vinifying their friends’ grapes in demijohns. Here we are not talking about simple every day wines for families. The garage winery is the place where great wine lover’s dreams come true: this is a person who spends whole nights on wine blogs, who travels hundreds of miles to take part in exclusive wine tastings, who as a present requests a bottle of Petrus for their 40th birthday and puts their snap taken at Romanée Conti on their home page. In other words one who wishes to make the perfect wine with his own hands but cannot buy a winery worth 10 million euro.

So that is why our wine lover builds his cellar beneath his home, and fills it with

all the best apparatus: he buys excellent grapes, one or two egg shaped cuvee (decidedly up-to-the-minute) for vinifying, and the barriques or tonneaux of the best brands for the ageing… maybe a pump, but nothing more….a small amount of technology and a lot of manual skills required. The results are often very good and allow our amateur wine maker to give 800 bottles of his wine to his friends.