Italian Wine

Wine Tasting with Filippo Bartolotta

March 5

We have invited Filippo Bartolotta, an Italian sommelier, to offer us two evenings of entertainment and fun around the foods and wine of Italy.

Both evenings offer amazing wines to sip and enjoy while learning of the wines as well as producers of food. We will learn about some of the finest producers and their products.

In addition to the tasting of quality wines, we will explore extra virgin olive oils, balsamic vinegars, chocolate, cheeses and salamis, all under the guidance of Filippo. The evenings will be filed with good humor and unsurpassed knowledge.

Why Italian wine and products?

Italy is a culture steeped in food traditions. Italians are intimately tied to the products not just of their country, but of their region or even more correctly of their home town. They take a special pride in the olive oil grown in the nearby countryside, the special fish found only in their bay or the grape varietal grown only on their hillsides. This special connection between food and culture is what has made movements like Slow Food resonate so deeply in Italy. It is why Italians still shop at the local open air market on Fridays or prefer to buy the prosciutto raised nearby to one trucked in from Spain.

Winemaking in Italy in some ways has been modernized. There are some monocrops of vineyard or wineries producing over a million bottles… but on average, the landscape of Italy is still a patchwork of thousands of small family run vineyards, interspersed with olive oil crops, vegetables, and woodlands. The average vineyard in Italy is a mere 2 hectares, an entirely different scale than the mega-wineries in the “new world”. These small wineries have passed down winemaking knowledge from generation to generation. Many never even transitioned to using chemicals, so they were “organic” before even knowing the buzz word existed (and still might not even bother to mention it on their label). Filippo is an ambassador of this wine world, and comes with endless knowledge of this patchwork of wineries all over Italy. He will transport you to the world of small producers, wine on the family table, special grape varietals and old and new winemaking techniques.

Thursday 6 to 8 pm
$85
Upon receipt of payment, you will be e-mailed with location

Filippo Bartolotta is a wine journalist, writing for major European and American wine publications such as Decanter and serving as the editor for the bestselling L’Espresso Italian Wine Guide (English version). He also teaches about wine at the prestigious University of Siena and hosts countless wine events each year in Italy and abroad. Filippo works with the winemakers association “Vini Veri” (“Real Wines”) a group of organic and biodynamic producers and he has attended their alternative to Vinitaly, a special wine expo of “natural” wines outside of Verona. Filippo strives to connect participants at his events and visitors to Italy with a sense of place, the real Italy, through careful exploration of authentic tastes and towns. He has developed a series of unique events with the Siena Tourism Board creating an emotional connection for participants between a specific Sienese wine, food, work of art and the territory of Siena. Through their senses, participants experience the land and its products, both artistic and agricultural. His unique, entertaining style and his incredible breadth of knowledge create the ideal environment for anyone to fall in love with wine and in the process to fall in love with Italy.

Visit his website