Project created with dear friend Federico Buffa, curated by Francesca De Michele and realized with Storie Libera fm.
Roberto and Federico will accompany you on a journey around wine, a journey consisting of 20 episodes.
You will retrace the history and evolution of wine through anecdotes, traditions, myths and legends from different eras, peoples and various continents.
You will leave from Mesopotamia, you will cross Ancient Rome, until you meet the boats of the Phoenicians.
You will arrive in California, Brazil, with stops in Australia, South Africa and China.
Get on board, it will be a fun and informative journey!
Vino. Il Romanzo segreto (2018)
Going back to the past is not a question of having a time machine, but of having a magic potion made from squeezed grapes. The wine recreates the remote atmosphere of the past such as the dirt track beaten by the outlaws on horseback, the first printed books, the characters of the ‘Decameron’, and going back further in the past the Bacchanalian times of the ancient Rome, the wine of the wedding at Cana, the wine of the Egyptian god Osiris, and the grape planted by Noah after the Great Flood. Roberto Cipresso , a world class winemaker, calls the wines that can tell such a story with each sip, the ‘wines of emotion’. As a hunter of treasure, he had sailed over land and sea, had climbed the walls of forgotten gardens, had entered the caves of the Ararat mountain looking for the most and ancient grapes that up until now had been consigned to oblivion, had walked the path less travelled by winegrowers, in order to bring back to life the quintessence of the human history and nature. It is the journey one take’s with the wine, a romance where passion and knowledge coexist with experience, frank opinion, streets to abandon and streets to walk It is not only about the poetry of unique and precious wines, which are not trivial because they are pursued by lovers, it is also about how the wine of our life has to be or has not to be.
La vita è meravigliosa se bevi buon vino (2016)
If wine is central to civilization at any time and in any place, that is because nothing is more essential to life than wine. Everything about wine is a question of understanding, dreaming, remembering and planning. Wine reminds us of tiny farmhouses in Chianti and also the spirit of Babel which lives again in the form of modern cities such as New York or Paris . Wine reminds us of an old man from Montalcino, who is able -much more than anybody else- to identify a wine from one sip , and one can follow its time line from Imperial Rome until today, during which it has become a means of persuasion as well as formulating politics and religion. Wine reminds us of how humans have domesticated wine as well as how wine has domesticated humans due to a spider , and of wines, which pretend to be unique after only 400 years, and of wines which are declared considerably modest after 2000 years! Wine reminds us of a world tour to 80 countries to meet ‘Doctor Merlot’, ‘the tennis player Chardonnay’, ‘the Cabernet cousins’, and to know that Sicily is the mother of Australia. Wine reminds us that the pleasure of drinking is similar to the pleasure of making love continuously until the two merge. It is a journey through the story and the philosophy of wine, the vineyard and life.
Vineide (Settembre 2009)
Wine is like a beautiful woman who winks, seduces and stares at you with her eyes, pampers you, smiles at you, excites you, you discover and chase. Wine is like a beautiful woman, who is lascivious, cryptic, celestial, enchanting and will break your heart. Liquid in its nature and by definition, wine is sexy in a way that neither a can of beer, a glass of barley water, a cup of camomile tea , a cup of Andean mate, a glass of whisky or a cocktail can ever be. Why? Because whilst alcohol makes you drunk, wine charms you, because first of all seducing you and then helps you in seducing others being hard to reach. Wine is like a beautiful woman, it plays hide-and-seek, from that glass bottle, whose label has enchanted you. Wine is like a beautiful woman, giving itself to you little by little, and when left in the open air and in the light asks for music, a play, a word, a joke and happiness. In this world wine bewitches you . Since darkest times immemorial man has been seduced by wine, and all human beings use wine in order to be seduced by bacchantes and satyrs, and to seduce souls, bodies, women and men, groups and individuals. That’s ‘Vineide’. For he who has understood that the big mystery of wine is nothing else than to act as an extraordinary, loyal, and embarrassing mirror for man, whose wish is not to be alone, but to save and to have passions, emotions, dreams, fantasies, loves and hopes.
Vinosofia (Settembre 2008)
Great red wines and white wines to be loved with bubbles of perfection. Thirty eight unforgettable glasses ranging from the ‘Brunello di Montalcino’ to the ‘Falanghina’, from the ‘Pinot Nero’ to the ‘Franciacorta’, from the ‘ Cabernet’ to the ‘Porto’, from ‘Syrah’ to the ‘Amarone’, from the ‘Barbaresco’ to the ‘Tokaji’, from the ‘Primitivo di Manduria’ to the ‘Champagne’. There are lot of books , which describe how to pair a wine with a dish , but my book is one that shows you how to match wine with life. It deals with the wine and its history, its provenance, the kind of sensation it offers and what it can transmit now and in the future. So many of these stories and anecdotes are so incredible, then they seem to be impossible, epic, dramatic, romantic, bellicose, erotic and heroic. The earth knows about a lot of things we cannot even start to imagine. This book is like travelling through the philosophy of the wine, of the grape, and of life, and is dedicated to all the people who have come to the realisation that drinking is not for forgetting, but for remembering.
Il Romanzo del vino (2006)
“One day, I cried while I was drinking a glass of wine. It was the winter of 1999 and I met with two friends in a bistrot in Paris. I was either melancholy nor particularly touched. We were talking about wine and life seated amongst the big dark wood shelve, which created divider walls around this tiny locale, as we tried to protect ourselves from the blast of cold air leaking from the door. We ordered a bottle of wine, which was opened and served. It was my turn to smell, taste and listen to that wine and as I did this I felt a strange, deep and spooky sensation. Tasting the wine again the sensation happened, and I couldn’t believe it . After the third taste, I was overwhelmed by emotion that I cried. I cried for a long time whilst also smiling. Since then, I have always thought that one day I should have written something to try to explain why.”