Welcome back, friends! Our "Journey through the Senses" for the AIS magazine "Vita" continues, and today we stop at the first station, the most ancestral and reassuring: sweetness.
Forget chemistry and sugar for a moment.
For me, sweetness is the shape of a circle, the absence of edges. It's the first flavor we encounter upon coming into the world, the indelible memory of a mother's embrace that tells us we're safe. It's a feeling of fullness, of warmth, a curved and continuous line that knows no conflict.
Forget chemistry and sugar for a moment.
For me, sweetness is the shape of a circle, the absence of edges. It's the first flavor we encounter upon coming into the world, the indelible memory of a mother's embrace that tells us we're safe. It's a feeling of fullness, of warmth, a curved and continuous line that knows no conflict.
I've sought this softness elsewhere too. I've seen it in the enveloping light of Leonardo's paintings and in the opulence of the Baroque. I've heard it in the fluid, dreamy notes of Debussy's "Clair de Lune" or Chopin's Nocturnes, music that doesn't strike, but lulls the soul.
If dessert is "trusting abandon," it sometimes risks becoming an "enemy" of the terroir, masking the subtlest nuances with its opulence. Think of Pantelleria: Passito is trapped sun, it is harmony, but it must never become a mask that hides the dramatic beauty of the wind and the toil of that extreme land.
Roberto Cipresso
Winemaker & Author. Expert in terroir viticulture
