With: toasting in Villa Sparina

The autumn stop of Wine Italy Tour Heres took place at the Villa Sparina Resort, in Monterotondo di Gavi. This project began to avoid the stop in Verona, which in spring hosts the most important wine fair in Italy. And has the goal of illustrating wine, stop after stop, directly from the producer to the client. A nice itinerary was created selecting some strategic locations, starting of course from Tuscany, the headquarters of Heres.

Founded in 2001, Heres distributes excellent products and has Cesare Turrini as the soul of a business that is now launched towards a catalogue composed of Italian and foreign wines, of historic and emerging wineries, with an across-the-board offer that is always oriented towards an essential selection criterion: high quality.

With – the acronym of Wine Italian Tour Heres – can also be intended as the preposition itself, highlighting the concept of group. The itinerary is made of four stops, usually in the months of March, May, October, and in a limited form in the summer, always in very impressive settings, ranging from the wineries of the producers represented by Heres to urban meeting points, always of the highest standard.

The autumn stop in Monterondo di Gavi is not by chance since Villa Sparina is distributed by Heres and their very historic cellars were the stage for this event hosting 30 wine-producer-friends beside some producers of excellent artisanal food such as refiner Eros Buratti of La Casera in Verbania. An excellent selection of cheese in which aromas, taste and Piedmontese tradition would highlight the wines available for tasting.

The tasting of Toma Alpe Pierino and Testun di Capra were not to be missed, both of which stand out because of the versatility of the wine-food pairing, especially with the new bubbles by the hosts Villa Sparina Brut Blanc de Blanc, synthetically illustrated by Massimo Moccagatta. «The base wine is made of 100% Gavi, with Cortese grapes, a metodo classico with 36 months of bottle fermentation for an Italian sparkling wine which reveals our territory. The bottle is packaged with elegance and contemporaneity with the very goal of pursuing the Villa Sparina concept which considers wine as a creative principle without every losing sight of quality. We’ve launched a project called "Villa Sparina & Friends" that will mark our bottles, every year with a seal in a different colour, representing a project with our clientele and some famous ambassadors. These Friends will be all those who have passion for wine, for good food and for a good life, and will make our philosophy and our style known».

Mentioning Pliny we could say that the truth is in the wine, and it always offers some great food for thought. One of these thoughts is shared by Cesare Turini himself to whom we have asked how the consumers’ demand for wines in Italy has changed: is there an increasing number of foreign producers or does our country surprise, in this respect?

«A few years ago I would have said that international wines certainly outclassed the demand for Italian wines, while today I’m proud to say that 85% of the wines I distribute are Italians and while once we would mostly sell champagne, and without any big difficulty, today it would be harder to name just one type of wine and one that was also outside our borders.»

How does Heres choose the wineries it distributes? «Undoubtedly, the main element - Turini continues - for the choice of a product or of a producer, is the valorisation of indigenous grape varieties, that would truly lead to a regional characterization». Now we only need to wait for the next With Tour. Meanwhile, Heres will be in Merano on the occasion of the Merano Wine Festival 2014.