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The First lady in the kitchen is the Italian Nadia Santini

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.

Angelo Gaja comments the recent Vinexpo fair

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 Chinese wine market is about to shut down?

The European Union charges excise for  Chinese photovoltaic panels and the Asian giant threatens to put taxes on imported wines

Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini

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”.

The Made in Italy brand is third in the world after Coca Cola and Visa

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.

The quality of wine which is not to be consumed

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.

New trend: wine, women, shoes and charity

Seductive and surprising is the new women’s wine world: wines in a bag, associations of young thirsty girls, offers of personal shoppers and lots more

Vernissage design, wine in a bag

Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini

In the USA 64% of wine consumers are women and 80% of the wine sold in a supermarket is bought by ladies. So why do wine producers continue thinking of their products as if they were for men? As women’s average income is rising, and traditionally they have earned less than men, but e now their pay is rising more rapidly than men’s and soon they will equal salaries and this will increase women’s spending ability and contractual power in the home and at work.
So here we have a new type of female protagonism in wine which is rising in a surprising way.
So here for you are the new trends in a very interesting OICCE article. The first case is the most intriguing. “Vernissage” the wine in elegant and revolutionary designer containers. Practically a pun explained with the term “bag in bag” so little bags that contain Cabernet, Chardonnay, and rosé from France and are proposed by the Swedish importer Oenoforos.
Again very interesting packaging from Lambrini who bottle in Liverpool fermented beverages with low alcohol content with the catchphrase “Lambrini girls just wanna have fun”. A promotion regarding 500.000 1,5 lt bottles has been launched with a mascara included. Just before that another promotion regarded access to a competition where the prize was “what money cannot buy” a voucher worth 2.000 pounds to be spent with an exceptional personal shopper Patrick Swan the celebrity stylist.