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Barolomga 360° new improvement: the wineries profiles.

Lorenzo Biscontin

Alessandro Masnaghetti is a one of a kind personality in the Italian wine scene for his authority, competence and, above all, independence that is unanimously recognized by wine operators and enthusiasts.

The figure of Alessandro (I allow myself to address him informally considering that we know each other for over 10 years) is understood from the autobiographical profile found on his website Enogea – Alessandro Masnaghetti Editore.

Enogea was born in 1997 by reworking the experience acquired with Ex Vinis, the first independent Italian tasting newsletter published by Veronelli Editore, of which I was the editor for many years.

After the first phase in 2002, Enogea returned to the market in 2005, enriching the usual thematic tastings with a more incisive style that aims to reconcile professionalism and pleasantness in reading, trying to address even important topics with a touch of healthy (self)irony.

But remember, always read and taste carefully because the bottle you buy must please you first of all (trust me!)

These few lines are the extremely concise, and incomplete, summary of a career as a food critic, first, and then a wine critic, which began in 1989 as a taster for Luigi Veronelli, for whom he will edit four editions of the Guide Oro – I vini di Veronelli.

He has held wine criticism columns for the daily newspaper “Il Giornale”, was the Italian editor-in-chief for the Swiss German-language magazine “Vinum”, collaborated with the French magazine “La Revue du Vin de France” and with WineToday, the New York Times’ wine portal.

In 2001 he created the Vini dell’Espresso guide, of which he was also the curator the following year.

Since 1997 he has published Enogea, which began as a newsletter and then continued in “fanzine” format (my definition), that is, a subscription-only magazine with extremely essential graphics, practically zero images, but a true concentration of content on wines and territories.

In 2007 the evolution of this path led him to the creation of maps of wine territories, which became his main commitment so much so that he earned the nickname “Map Man” by the American magazine Wine Spectator and the Grand Prix de La Revue du Vin de France 2021 as “Cultural Work of the Year”

Today if you go to the Enogea website you will find 70 publications including paper books, e-books and relief maps with the maps and descriptions of the wines of 30 wine areas and sub-areas from Barolo to Bordeaux, from Orvieto to Chianti Classico, just to name a few. With Vinous and Antonio Galloni he is mapping the vineyards of California.

His books and maps are distributed worldwide in over 30 countries.

I interviewed Alessandro on the occasion of the last important update of the website www.barolomga360.it

Hi Alessandro, let’s start from the beginning, what is the website barolomga360.it?

It is a website where the Additional Geographic Mentions (Menzioni Geografiche Aggiuntivein Italian, from which the acronym mga) established by the Barolo regulations in 2010 are shown in interactive panoramic photographs taken from above using a drone, which can be viewed at 360° by rotating them to the right, left, up and down on the computer or smartphone screen.

The main geographical points are identified in the photograph: mountains, hills, villages, crus, etc… In this way users can better orient themselves within the landscape and understand where they are.

I chose this solution instead of the video because it is much richer and more effective. The video, in fact, shows the vineyards but is very rarely enriched with other information. In the case of the 360° rotatable photographs, however, they can be observed with all the calm and detail necessary to capture all the aspects that characterize the territory. (Editor’s note: the images can also be zoomed in).

The images can be consulted by municipality or by MGA. Furthermore, there is a large section dedicated to the different Barolo vintages from 2000 to today (but the summary table goes back to 1967).

When and why was barolomga360° born?

The site was born four years ago with the 360° photographs, which I call the first level of the site, and there were several reasons.

First of all, it is more engaging than the maps printed on paper.

A person who enters and “looks around” can explore the territory discovering more things than they would see by staying on site, thanks to all the information that enriches the images.

It thus becomes possible to understand the wines also through the landscape. Hills of a certain shape derive from a certain geology; the presence of a forest determines a certain microclimate and that of a creek another.

To grasp and understand these things, panoramic photographs are more immediate than printed maps.

Finally, the site can be updated with a timeliness that the book obviously does not have.

If there is a first level of use of the site, I imagine there will be a second one also …?

The second level is the update just published with the database of 350 companies.

For each winery there are panoramic images of the different MGAs in which the vineyards owned or rented by the company are identified. These images are also navigable as described before and therefore allow you to immediately place the vineyards of that winery within the territory.

From the images you can go to the winery’s profile, where a lot of information is collected:

– Contacts.

– A brief description of its history and the most recent news.

– The list of MGAs in which it is present with the relative surface of its vineyards.

– The cartographic map of the vineyards.

– The maps with the geology of the vineyards.

– The Barolo wines produced by the Winery.

For the wines I have not indicated scores and ratings, which are outside the informative purpose of this site, but I have indicated with a green dot those that I recommend to start getting to know the wines of that winery, with a red dot the wines that are no longer in production, with a blue dot the wines that will soon be released on the market.

To date barolomga360 is the most complete and accurate source on Barolo because all the information has been collected directly from the winery and personally verified, including of course the regular tasting of the wines.

Does the addition of the company profiles mean that there will be no more new paper publications?

Absolutely not. Digital and paper are complementary because digital offers immediacy and timeliness of updating, while the book allows for greater in-depth study, precisely because their usage way.

The book also has its own intrinsic aesthetic value, so much so that the publication of a collectible cartography, printed on fine paper, is planned.

Other projects in sight?

As you know, Langhe are my strong point so the next project in the pipeline will be the creation of the 306th of Barbaresco. But don’t ask me when …

We just have to wait. In the meantime, let’s enjoy the Barolo!

Vinophila
Vinophila
Vinophila 3D Wine Expo - The metaverse for Wine, Beer and Alcoholic Beverages

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