Lorenzo Biscontin
Food, Fashion and Furniture are the 3Fs that represent Italian excellence in the world. Some also add that of Ferrari, or Fabricated Machinery if you are not passionate about cars.
Periodically in the wine industry, there is talk of the opportunity to team up with other indusrties of the Italian system, to exploit the synergies between the proposals of Made in Italy.
A vision that is certainly correct and shared also at an institutional level, but which has only been realized on sporadic occasions.
It is therefore pleasing to hear that the Collavini winery in Corno di Rosazzo (Udine) has renewed the collaboration that began a year ago with the Moschino brand.
During the events that Moschino will organize in December in the flagship stores of London, Rome, New York, Milan and Paris to present the new collection to its most important customers, the sparkling wine “Il Grigio”, an emblematic product of the Friulian winery, will be served.
The continuation of this collaboration indicates the affinity that has consolidated between the two brands. If Moschino is one of the brands that has revolutionized fashion in the last forty years for its iconoclastic choices, “Il Grigio” is a sparkling wine that has innovated the sparkling wine sector in Friuli and in Italy.
It is in fact the first sparkling wine produced with a cuvée of Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay, presented on the market at Vinitaly in 1973. It therefore represents one of the facets of the Pinot Grigio phenomenon from the north-east of Italy, that in over sixty years has become synonymous with Italian white wine on the world market.
Oenological expertise and innovative nature that Collavini confirmed fifteen years later with the first single varietal Ribolla Gialla sparkling wine.
For Collavini, the collaboration with Moschino is the stage of a journey that has always aimed to place its wines in prestigious situations and environments, so as to underline their intrinsic quality and enhance the brand.
Before arriving in the Moschino boutiques, Il Grigio was appreciated by the current King Charles III of England at the time when he was Prince of Wales, by the historical representatives of the Milanese cabaret, namely Renato Pozzetto, Cochi Ponzoni, Teo Teocoli, Enzo Jannacci, and was served as a welcome glass to Alitalia and Air Canada passengers.
The Collavini “case” teaches us three things:
– To position a (brand of) wine in the high end of the market, the intrinsic quality of the wine is the starting condition, but only one of the elements. We could say that it is the necessary condition, but not sufficient.
– Having a clear and complete strategy, which concerns all aspects of the business, from the use of horizontal autoclaves, to the long stay on the yeasts, up to communication, allows even an average family winery to dialogue with the big Made in Italy brands.
– In the wine business it is not necessary to operate only within institutional initiatives in a top-down logic but it is also possible to act effectively on the part of the single wineries with a bottom-up approach.
