What Venetians and Tourists drink? A first hand investigation
What Venetians and Tourists drink? A first hand investigation… - Part 1-
We intend to offer the visitor our point of view about Venetian lifestyle, while avoiding the stereotypes you can often read in many guidebooks or brochures. We are focussing on wine, the way the taste evolved through the last 15 years, which are the favourite wines for locals, and compare them with the foreigners’ demand. In this sense visitors will find a list of good value wines suggested by those who are in charge for the best winestores in the city. Get ready for the next one!
The winestore Bottiglieria Colonna was established in 1993, after a long experience of Mauro Perzolla -one of the owners- as an agent for the best wineries of the Veneto and the Friuli.
Mauro is positive about the improvement in quality of the wines sold on a daily basis, in terms of amount of information, awareness of personal taste, refinement of the demand, while a couple of decades ago regular wine was bad in Venice, cheap and no matter where it came from.
However the information is often deceiving, people are confused by commercials, magazines, newspaper articles and a new generation of “Osti” -in charge for wine bars- who are not really professionals, since wine agents are able to suggest an array of wines everybody likes. Passion and knowledge are unimportant. He noticed some boasting attitudes, although in his opinion there’s a lack of good information and tasting training.
Therefore demand is not constant, it mainly follows general trends according to how successful a wine is. Do clients appreciate more the brand than the wine? Yet he’d rather choose the latter, due to a steady customer care process, he suggests bottles made by small producers or if a wine is sold out, he is able to replace it with a similar one, maybe from another Italian region? Mr.Perzolla ramarked that when clients trust him, the reputation of a wine area or the label is not important any more. Clients don’t mind trying new bottles, and share with him new impressions and emotions. A good advice is always welcome, above all when national economy is not growing and life gets more and more expensive.
For this reason Mauro, Morena and Matteo -his business partners- boast a broad choice of Veneto, Friuli,Trentino and Alto Adige wines (about 80% of the whole stock), stretching from the lake Garda to the borders with Slovenia, most of them included in a price range of min.6 – max 12 E per bottle and produced by small estates which can’t be found in supermarkets. Then some unusual wines from Central Italy -Abruzzo and Marche- and the most authoritative red wines from Veneto, Trentino, Tuscany and Piedmont, together with a good selection of Champagnes, and distinguished liquors from all over the world.
But how Mauro selects these wines? There’s a network of Agents who takes trips to the countryside, explore the hilly areas and updates constantly their knowlwdge of the wine world. They bring him some “weird” bottles, then Mauro and his partners invite his best friends to dinner and taste the wines all together, in a relaxed but critical way. They are used to do it from time to time, and the final decision is based on a comparison with the ones of the same typology, and with the store price range, just to keep the same quality and style of the place.