Guida alle Bollicine del Mondo, the brand-new guide to bubbles from around the world in an app

The Guida alle Bollicine del Mondo, the guide to the bubbles of the world, whose first edition has appeared as an app – contrary to the restaurant guide which until 2015 was printed – represents for us at Identità Golose a particularly significant moment. We were born in the winter of 2004 with a clear goal: to give voice and visibility to Italian cooks, a stage where they could convey their ideas and share them with chefs from other countries and continents.

And when you draw such a precise and clear line, everything you add to it, every change you make, cannot be improvised. In fact, the contrary is needed. There is no such thing as restaurants without wine, but how can you match fine food and fine wines, tastings and publications while avoiding the risk of banality? Cinzia Benzi and I gave ourselves an answer when, four years ago, we decided to join the world of wine guides. And it was the same that we gave ourselves around one decade before, with restaurants: create something original, that wasn't already in the market. We needed to answer why the need for an extra guide, for something new.

In the first case we thought that tourism connected with restaurants was growing more and more, so much so that it made no sense to focus only on Italy. Plus it made no sense to run an international congress and a website, if we then would focus just on Italy's twenty regions. So we discussed how to do something new with vines, barrels and bottles. The answer is this app which in its first year includes 500 labels from as many producers of bubbles. No white wines, red wines, and not even rosé or dessert wines.

This clear mark was missing in wine guides that review every type of wine without excluding any segment. Deciding to focus only on sparkling wine, produced in every corner of the planet, is a very contemporary choice. At a time that is dominated by more and more complex tasting menus, with recipes full of ingredients, a few grams of leaves, spices, fruits and vegetables, meat and fish, pairing food and drinks is a more and more demanding task. A metodo classico sparkling wine is instead the perfect match, throughout the meal. It simplifies. Bubbles are the perfect wine for the Babel tower that is today's cuisine. The time is gone when they were too often only considered for apertivos or special toasts. In fact, they full deserve to be considered a delicacy throughout the meal.

Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso