Rock star success for Brunello in Moscow
Great enthusiasm for Brunello who, in the workshop, was charged by restaurateurs, sommeliers and importers all wishing to taste and buy it
By Donatella Cinelli Colombini
Violante during the Brunello tasting in Moscow
My journey to Russia with Violante began last Sunday with a series of hiccups: an error in the visa with an hours delay in customs. Summer temperatures with winter clothes in our suitcases. A fraud of a taxi driver who tries to make us pay double for the journey from the airport to the hotel. Definitely we started off on the wrong foot!
Luckily the dinner with our distributor, in a refined Italian restaurant, is a real success. The city is spectacular, with respect to 8 years ago when I was last here, it seems another place. Well kept and well lit buildings and elegant restaurants, and many young people, in fact only young people. In fact along the roads no elderly citizens and no dogs.
The day dedicated to Brunello is a great success. We receive visits from many
Brunello producers with their suitcase in Moscow
more operators than was foreseen, an enthusiastic crowd, which was curios, and surprised by the quality of the Montalcino wines. The type of excitement you expect for a rock star. But here Brunello is a rock star. It is a myth of exclusivity and luxury which comes from the trendiest Italian region fro Russia: Tuscany. The only problem is the heat. We increase the air conditioning and in the rooms next door it is cold, but never mind!
The two seminars also go very well, and have plenty of participants, the speaker Igor Serdiuk, a Russian wine shop owner and journalist, who knows Montalcino as well as we do and he neutralizes a critic who says that he can smell blackcurrant leaves in the wine. Who knows what blackcurrant leaves smell like!
During the Brunello seminary in Moscow
For the dinner we are all happy though tired, all of the wineries who were out looking for an importer have found useful contacts and those who already have an importer have given their wine to taste to the best restaurateurs in Moscow. I really make a great impression because I have a beautiful interpreter, who is also very clever, and is successful in finding an importer for one winery. The male producers, especially the younger ones, continuously invite her to Montalcino, and she promises to come next summer.
The next morning train journey towards Saint Petersburg. A straight railroad for 700 km. This Russia is so incredible!
The atmosphere resembles that on school outing. Smiling faces, jokes, relaxed comradeship but whenever a Wi-Fi connection is available the lap tops are once again opened, and everyone tries to work. What a great team Brunello has, determined, impassioned, competent …. Invincible … at least we hope!