MFWF 2013, four days to go

Someone once sang that the second album is always the hardest one in the career of an artist. Who knows if this applies also in the case of a wine festival. Now that the opening of the second edition of the Milano Food&Wine Festival is approaching, the expectations would like to uncork themselves. Described in the jargon used by those who write reports and forecasts, MFWF could be considered a spin-off of the Merano Wine Festival. This is true in theory, but if you analyse the genesis of this event in detail, you will understand that such a definition doesn’t completely explain the cultural and tasty capacity that awaits us from the 9th to the 11th of February.

Helmut Köcher, creator of the Merano Festival and co-author of this event, together with Paolo Marchi, founder of Identità Golose, clearly explained this: "I’ve always promoted the consumption of wine paired with excellent food. The meeting with Marchi is the crowning of this desire of mine, with a parterre of excellent wineries and chefs, in order to offer the best to those who participate". The Milanese audience is certainly less trained on wine than that attending the Merano Wine Festival. However, the curiosity of getting to know wineries in which quality doesn’t allow for compromises and dishes with which you can totally compromise, will be the engine that will move this three-day event, which not by chance is partly overlapping the Identità Milano congress.

400 labels, 100 Italian producers and a dozen of foreign ones; among these, there’s a winery from Georgia, in Asia, the country to which we owe the birth of wine, some 6 thousand years ago. Each winery has been selected following the simple criterion of quality according to which at least 2 of the 3 wines they will bring must have a score of at least 86 points. There’s an unshakeable quality and a cultural objective that jumps from the glasses into the plates: offering the indications to choose a wine and its pairing without being categorical. The wine-food pair must be a marriage, they must balance and sustain each other. Kocher’s words are once again the best witness of this ceremony: "It’s best for a schiava not to be too close to an ox tagliata; in the same way, a particular pinot noir shouldn’t be afraid to woo a roasted sea-bass".

Among the wineries who have already joined, there are names of the highest quality together with producers who will be unknown only for a little longer. Marco Bianco from Piedmont, Allegrini and Col del Sas from Veneto, Villa Job from Friuli Venezia Giulia, Le Marchesine from Lombardy, Lunae Bosoni from Liguria, Castelfeder from Alto Adige, Medici Ermete from Emilia Romagna, Tenuta di Serrapetrona from the Marche region, Ulisse from Abruzzo, Giardini Arimei and Joaquin from Campania.

As for food, among the 20 chefs invited (we have already talked about them here), there are sound figures and others who promise sparkles. The directors will be the Cerea brothers, in other words, it’s like having Spielberg at the stove: absolute quality and guaranteed coup de théâtre. Special mention for their dessert cart, which will be present on all of the three days. What a joy it would be to put a euro coin inside that cart, just like at the supermarket, and bring it back home! The first day will be opened with the flair of Luigi Sartini (Taverna Righi, San Marino) and end with two comedians of the level of Luciano Monosilio and Alessandro Pipero acting as licenced carbonari.