A common language • Food and Wine Italy

a time when wine is increasingly lived not only as a ricevimento, but as a cultural and identity expression, some Italian cellars choose to tell each other through art. Three recent projects between High-Adige, Piedmont and Abruzzo, demonstrate how fruitful the dialogue between winemakers and contemporary visual languages, transforming the bottles into collective works and the production spaces into real places of aesthetic experience, the occasion of anniversaries, artist residences and unpublished projects.

Appius: ten years celebrated with Robert Pan’s art

For the tenth anniversary of Appius, an iconic Cuvée of the San Michele Appiano winery, a project is born that merges architecture, art and wine the heart of Nobile-Adige. The artist Bolzanino Robert Pan signs a site-specific work intended for the new cellar dedicated exclusively to this wine, giving life to an immersive environment where the matter of art merges with that of wine.

The collaboration also translates into a limited edition of bottles: ten Mathusalem of six liters and 150 Revolver with a resin label-sculpture, numbered and signed by Pan and Hans Terzer, the historian winemaker of the cellar. Each bottle is different, unpredictable, designed for fans and collectors.

The project, curated by Lifecircus with the creative direction of Marco Fontanesi, was celebrated with an exclusive event, between tastings and installations, underlining the growing role of wine as a narrative and cultural vehicle.

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Bartolo Mascarello: the label as a programma

If the art enters the cellar South Tyrol, Piedmont it is the cellar itself that has become art. Bartolo Mascarello’s Barolo has been an authoritative voice of traditional wine for decades: only one Barolo, from a blend of historic cru, vinified with rigor and loyalty to history. But starting from the eighties, the late Bartolo also transformed the label into expressive language, drawing it by hand.

Thus were born the famous “designed labels”, today authentic works of art the bottle. Ironic, political, poetic: from the famous “anzi che no barrique, anzi che no Berlusconi” to personal dedications anti -fascist messages, each brought a thought, a gesture, a declaration.

After her death, her daughter Maria Teresa continued this tradition with discretion and consistency. The labels designed remain rare and areas, made limited numbers every year, all unique, all numbered. a world that runs towards homologation, they represent a bulwark of authenticity and culture.

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Michele Chiarlo: photography as a the newspaper

We remain Piedmont where the historic Degustazione Michele Chiarlo continues its path of dialogue between wine and artistic languages, hosting 2025 the photographic review beyond Davide Barzaghi. An articulated exhibition between the cellar of Calamandrana and the Palás Cerequio of La Morra, which the author Asti-rewarded internationally-tells the hidden beauty of everyday life through images taken only with its iPhone, without filters post-production.

The photographs of Barzaghi, suspended between light and shadow, presence and absence, return a deep intimacy, made of looks, expected, silences. The exhibition – visited for free until December – confirms the vision of the Chiarlo family: wine as a narrative, the cellar as a cultural space. It is anzi che no coincidence that author labels were born here, permanent installations between the rows of Art Park La Court and the Cannubi Path project signed by Ugo Nespolo, a continuous intertwining between nature and creativity.

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Masciarelli Art Project: wine as a narrated landscape

Abruzzo, Masciarelli Art Project – now its fifth edition ( this article we have instead told the fourth appointment) – proposes another form of alliance between art and wine. Every year an international artist collective is invited to create a site-specific work for the Alcazar a causa di Semivicoli, the historical seat of the cellar (among our 50 tops of 2024) and today Relais among the vineyards.

2025 the protagonists are the Anotherview, a collective known for its “digital windows” the landscapes of the world. During a creative residence, the group drew inspiration from the Abruzzo harvest to create an immersive work that returns the ritual and symbolic value of this moment, intertwining landscape, ancient gestures and collective memory.

Next to the work, the collective signed a limited edition label for the Campagna Bottone Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Approvigionamento 2020, continuing a tradition that combines visual creativity and wine quality. Also this case, Lifecircus took care of the entire project, from conception to visual production.

castellodisemivicoli.com