The best female chef in the world is Nadia from the “Dal Pescatore” restaurant in Mantova while Massimo Bottura is 3rd in the rating of the TOP 50
Nadia Santini Dal Pescatore
An Italian lady wins the golden medal in the kitchen while in the general list, where the guys dominate with no competition, Massimo Bottura from the Osteria Francescana in Modena brings home a bronze medal.
Well done to both of them, to reach such heights is as difficult as winning the Olympics, maybe even harder. The English magazine “The world 50 best restaurant” awards in the first two positions giants such as Joan Roca El Celler de Can Roca (Girona Spain) and René Redzepi from Noma in Copenhagen. On the other hand the title won by Nadia Santini has previously been won in past years by Elena Arzak and Anna Sophie Pic, so actually an Italian, a Spanish and a French woman.
But lets see you this queen of the kitchen is, Nadia Santini, who looks like a University professor , with a nice face framed by silver hair and lively and curios eyes.
A multi-sensorial night: live music by The Pipedreamers, tastings of Cenerentola Doc Orcia and Brunello, artistic perfumery during the August 10th night
#CaliciDiStelle 2013 #Tuscany #ViolanteGardini
Violante Gardini celebrates the election as Presidente Toscana of the Movimento del Turismo del vino with a party open to the public for Calici di Stelle – August 10th – at Fattoria del Colle in southern Chianti.
Live music for dancing in the midst of the barrels and every half hour a pause for a wine tasting, before getting back onto the dance-floor, dedicate a few moments to a perfume, to the falling stars and to expressing wishes.
For those who wish to dine there will be a lovely buffet with 10 dishes among which a Chianina Tartar created especially for the occasion (28€).
The party at Fattoria del Colle will develp, with some extra touches the theme of Calici di Stelle 2013 in the Tuscan wineries <Wine and music stars >>.
A new rite, young, refined but in direct contact with nature and the suggestions of a night in the countryside. The music at Fattoria del Colle will begin at 10 pm to then continue until midnight when there will be a toast to the stars.
Angelo Gaja gives a detailed description, with realism and acuteness and makes us reflect on Vinexpo a francocentric fair that, maybe is not even liked by the French producers any longer
By Angelo Gaja
Angelo Gaja
Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini
A few comments upon returning from the Vinexpo ( 16.06.2013 – 20.06.2013). VINEXPO is the biennial wine fair held in Bordeaux. We are guests in their own home, those who are top of the class, the area which has created the biggest demand in the world for the wines that it produces. To protect Vinexpo there are also CHAMPAGNE and COGNAC, the other two leading French beverages. The other appellations/nations come along later in haphazard order.
There were quite a good number of operators from all over the world, even though at the moment it’s no time to be ecstatic. China and other Asiatic nations that had contributed to the increase in prices of Bordeaux and Cognac, show less interest than before.
The affluence to the fair has been inferior to that of the 2011 edition. It is necessary to consider though that at the same time as Vinexpo more than 300 chateaux (every edition sees the number growing) have organized at home special tastings and gala dinners, pulling away a high number of visitors. The prestigious ROEDERER group (Champagne Cristal and wines) have on the contrary decided to not be present at the fair, renting a location in a hotel in the city centre where their importers could meet. This example might become contagious.
The European Union charges excise for Chinese photovoltaic panels and the Asian giant threatens to put taxes on imported wines
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box and wine
A battle with worrying results and a case of retaliation. It does seem as though the Chinese photovoltaic panels have pollutant components as well as being produced with few health guarantees for the workers. The result is a really low price. The consortium for European enterprises Eu ProSun with the German industries in the lead has judged the Chinese competition unfair and has asked for the enforcement of antidumping duties. After 9 months of investigations, Bruxelles has decided to apply them in a provisional manner, as they had done previously in USA.
The Chinese authorities are studying their countermove as usual in these cases, it will be a “retaliation”.
They spend on average 14€ more per bottle, they buy more often, they are more competent and more International than those who buy wine in a traditional manner.
Violante, Donatella's daughter with a chef in Alberta, Canada
Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini
The profile of the online buyer comes from Vente-privee.com (reproposed by WineNews) an e-commerce giant with 18 million rapports all over the world and 30 million in the wine business during 2012. The sector, according to them is just starting, and seems destined to expand enourmously.
Platters, tureens, coasters which capture in resin ears of wheat, fruit, and leaves all bring into your home nature. You can find them in the Toscana Lovers shop in Siena
handicraft from Tuscany - salad bowl
Riccardo Marzi is son and grand son of sculptors, he too has studied art and has worked in several art studios in Florence until he created his own laboratory. He has designed a range of objects made in resin where nature has been “captured”. So you have corn, ears of wheat, leaves, fruit portions all arrive on the table with a touch of nature and class. Class, because the artistic imprinting is present in each of these objects which are all different one from the other and all characterized with extreme compositive elegance. Colourful, unbreakable, lightweight casual and elegant at the same time.
This could be a real locomotive for wine, oil, cold cuts, cheeses…. If there were not in circulation five times as many false products that are “Italian sounding“
false made in Italy cold cuts
From mozzarella to cold cuts, from olives to prosciutto the presence of the Italian label, is always practically, abroad, a sign of something false: it seems Italian but it is not. So that is how most of our efforts to qualify our production, renovate it, make it more healthy and better known all end up making richer those who produce false made in Italy products in nations where the cost of production and the guarantees are inferior to ours.
How frustrating! Oscar Farinetti – Eataly is right, when he says that all that is
false asiago cheese
necessary is a legal service able to energetically contrast these Italian sounding products abroad so that our nation might become the richest in the world. In fact regardless the competition of these forgers, in the first three month of 2013 the food and wine exportation has increate by + 12%, a great result.
A growing number of enterprises, associations and agricultural confederations are asking the government for an efficient protection service for what is Made inItaly. It would really be an action that could help Italian foods fly high.
In the US 51 million women choose the wine when at a restaurant. They prefer Malbec, Pinot Noir and Champagne rather than Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay
statistics for female wine consumption
Women’s revolution in wine has begun. This fact is well known by restaurateurs who in three years have seen an increase in women’s wine alcohol consumption grow by 14%. Those who sell wine have also realized this and they have noticed also that among the younger generations it is in fact the young women who are more interested and more impassioned (source WineNews). The will domineer, uncontested, the future scenario.
It is not possible to not acknowledge that 64% of wine consumers in the US are women and that they by 80% of the bottles sold (source OICCE), these are facts … yet wineries continue producing thinking of male consumers and organize communication actions directed towards a male target. Evidently old habits die hard!
Attention, because women’s tastes are different from men’s! For the gentle sex elegance and liveliness of the packaging are more important, women are attracted by labels which are addressed directly to them. The aromatic richness of the wine and the absence of bitter notes are essential. So that is why Pinot Noir, bubbles and Malbec are preferred to Chardonnay and Cabernet.
The ratings that appear in the cult magazines and which have, up to now, directed consumption, do not influence them.
This is a real revolution!
History, character and trends of the shabby chic style including some advice for shopping and fro a wedding banquet
Wedding backstage - Fattoria del Colle - flowers
Its guru is the interior designer from the US Rachel Ashwell who has made elegant scruffiness a philosophy of life. The beginning of it all has strong ethic values; recycling, renovating, accepting the film left on things that have been lived as an element able to reveal the soul of things, because the use of objects entraps humanity into them and the story of those who have used them. New objects do not have these stories. So here was born the passion for vintage, market stalls and the new cloche style and most of all furnishings based on hap hazard combinations of thing that are elegant but different. So here come unpaired chairs around a table, where the table setting is made with period porcelains and silver cutlery, unpaired, and playing in a creative way with the contrasts.
The immaterial elements of wine are worth nearly 2/3 of the perceived value of bottles and are history, territory, packaging, brand, fame, market, price
Seen for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini
Canelli OICCE immaterial values
We are in the Enoteca Regionale in Canelli invited by OICCE. Here where the density of the vineyards is maybe the higher than anywhere else in Italy and the wineries Gancia and Riccadonna are part of the historic centre of the village, it is difficult to say, in wine, that fiction beats reality. But it’s true. The value perceived of a bottle goes further than the quality of what it contains. An extraordinary example is the Lafite dated 1787 belonging to Thomas Jefferson sold for 156.000 $. The quality of the wine inside is not so important <<but the bottle’s history is important>> says Giusi Mainardi who teaches wine history in the Università di Torino.
History, but not only. The wine’s territory becomes a protagonist with tourism –
Canelli vineyards spring 2013
and this is where I come into it- or it becomes unique such as the terraces of the heroic viticulture that Gianluca Macchi from Cervim tells us about. Then there is quality that gets told, wine communication, which Fabio Gallo from AIS looks upon with a critical eye <<there is so much of it that wine risks dying through too much communication>>. Then the packaging with so many labels that are works of art that talk about the producers more than words can (Giacomo Bersanetti SGA): the Energy in innovation by Gaja, cultural research by Ceretto, or the elegance by Bellavista. Finally the brands and how they defend themselves especially in nations where they are counterfeited such as Eastern Europe <<but mainly in Italy>> says Maria Cristina Baldini from the Studio Torta.
