Over the years, I’ve taken dozens of photos of stands at Vinitaly that struck me for some reason. Deciding how to portray your winery with a stand is no simple or laughing matter. It’s serious business and can cost quite a bit as well. Some elaborate, some simple (at times, too simple!), how you use color, how you use words (too many, too few) – it all adds up to an impression. And while we’d all like to believe that you don’t judge a book by its cover, or a wine by its label, or a winery by its stand – we all do! It’s the first thing we see, and first impressions do count.
So reflecting on the recent return to in-person wine fairs in Verona with Vinitaly 2022, I’d like to offer up a few examples of what I’ve observed.
Talk about worshipping at the temple of wine! Ca’ dei Frati takes it to the extreme… Reconstructing a Gothic church at Vinitaly!
When I first started attending Vinitaly some 20 years ago, I remember being struck by how much of Italian culture went into a stand: architecture, fashion, design – it was all rolled up into one delicious bundle.
A wall of yellow bottles, or a yellow wall of bottles… And can I say? Yellow is not the best color to use in a stand about wine…
Simple, and perhaps even efficient: Italian Wine Tasting. How much more basic does it get? You can afford the no tricks approach when you make Barolo.
Old wine family, new stand: a luminous Marzia Varvaglione with luminous panels showing one hundred years of a family story…
Quite an array of bottles…. White, blond wood, simple and simplistic
Parole, parole, parole. Do they really think people are going to stop and read that wall? Really? What the leading opinion-makers have to say? If you want your scores to emerge, maybe big panels at Vinitaly is not the way to show them off…
Oy oy oy, Parole parole parole, the revenge, part II. They got so caught up in their own philosophical concepts, they forgot at one point that the English part was in italics… But that’s our editor’s eye… No one else really stopped to read all these words on a wall when there was good tasting to be had!
Poetry should be poetry, and a stand a stand. If you want poetry, get a poet, if you want good wine, an enologist. Not sure that wine really is (or even should be!) the primary force behind men and their desires…
Somebody must have said this, so we’ll put some quotes on it for good measure!
In the midst of all that color, a little black and white stands out. Reminding us that we really do prefer a Technicolor world!
This is adorable. I’ve been pouring the Peninsula for a long time too, maybe not 46 years, but I just love this art work!
All the colors of wine, and all the styles of stand. The only way to truly grasp what goes into this display is to see for yourself. So see you at the next Vinitaly or ProWein!
Suzanne Branciforte's Italian Grapevine 