RIVA DEL GARDA. There Garda viticulture is ready for a leap in quality. Over 150 participants in the Garda Forum organized by the Rotary Club of Riva for the promotion of wine tourism and sustainability.
“Participating in the 29th edition of the Forum means that for many years the three territories of Lake Garda have been working well together, as a team, and this makes me very proud”, he declares Cristina Santi, mayor of the Municipality of Riva del Garda. “Talking about viticulture is important because our territory lives above all from tourism and we know that food and wine tourism is increasingly expanding: the insights from this conference will help us not only to investigate our traditions but also to have a perspective for the future on the topic of sustainability”.
Me too’Councilor for Tourism of the Province of Trento Roberto Failoni underlined how the Garda Forum is a further opportunity for the three territories of the lake to demonstrate the importance of collaborating: “A few months ago we signed a three-year agreement to promote the three shores of the lake together to the whole world and this is what we want to do in the coming years. This event is a great opportunity to talk about the food and wine of the three territories and in this regard we Trentino people are aware that we can do even more because the opportunities are many. We have set in motion careful communication to attract that curious tourist who, in addition to wanting to know the beauties of the lake, wants to discover the culinary and wine-making possibilities. Even after this evening, I am convinced that it will be even more evident that only united can we win.”
Finally, before starting the conference, the president of the Riva del Garda Fierecongressi company Roberto Pellegrini highlighted the importance of dealing with central issues such as sustainability and wine tourism: “These are vital issues also from an economic point of view: the recent Vinitaly highlighted how the world linked to wine moves around 3 billion euros, together with high-spending supply chain players with particular attention to the environment. If we manage to seize the opportunity provided by Rotary to think about these issues, we can start from these premises to think in future months about a development projected in this direction”.
The Forum, promoted by the three Rotary Clubs of the lake and this year organized by that of Riva del Garda, was therefore introduced by Enzo Merzfood and wine expert and scientific coordinator of this edition, to then get to the heart of the matter with the interventions of experts from the wine and tourism sectors.
Off with the professor Attilio Science of the University of Milan who spoke of the Garda area as a hybrid space characterized by frontier viticulture, for which “it is essential to differentiate ourselves by riding the spirit of the time, the Zeitgeist: in this way we will be able to communicate our identity, giving meaning and value to the word vocation”.
Following are the interventions of Francesco Spagnolli, oenologist and former director of the educational center of the San Michele Agricultural Institute/Mach Foundationwith a focus on Garda as one of the major European producers of fruity and aromatic white wines, including sparkling and rosé base wines, and of Giovanna Prandini, president of Ascovilo (Association of Consortia for the Protection of Lombard Wines) on the production identity and identity characteristics of viticulture and wines on the Brescia side of the lake.
The collaborator of Red shrimp, Nicola Frassonthen focused on the urgency of a return to tradition and consistency with the suitability of the land and the Garda terroir, while Alberto Gelmettihead of the Viticulture Unit of the Technology Transfer Center of the Mach Foundation, addressed the issue of vitivinicultural sustainability in the Garda area, underlining how it is “agriculture and viticulture that create the landscape, a fundamental element in Alto Garda: it is the territory itself which becomes a brand and thus acts as a guarantee of quality.”
The president of the Garda Dolomiti tourism company, Silvio Rigatti, instead illustrated the contents of the Strategic Destination Plan which provides for important initiatives, alliances and synergies for the promotion of wine tourism also in the “internal areas” of Alto Garda: “A few years ago we asked ourselves what we could do in the future for the territory and who was the ideal guest for us, thus creating a new positioning for our destination. An important focus was the food and wine product as the hinterland gives us many extraordinary products: for this reason we created the food and wine table together with the operators themselves to think about how to enhance them. With the collaboration of Trentino Marketing Area Ata and the operators of Garda Trentino we have therefore identified three macro-actions: the olive tree path to discover the olive growing tradition of Garda Trentino, the toolkit for restaurateurs to become ambassadors of the territory with a focus on the most representative vines, and finally glfood and wine events with the Month of Taste to give coherence to all the local events. The modus operandi that we have adopted therefore starts from the involvement of the operators, making them feel within a compact tourism company, then moving on to the care of our territory, to make the residents and consequently the guests feel at home first”.
In the end, Emilio Pedron, consultant in the wine sector and territorial marketing expert, the task of the conclusions with which he highlighted the importance of understanding the evolution of demand in the tourism and food and wine sectors, also taking generational change into consideration: “Once it was the tourist who chose the place while now it is the opposite. It is necessary to make a leap in quality so that the ‘Garda of wine and tourism’ is recognized at the top of the rankings of places of ‘good living’: we have been favored by nature which has already done its duty, now it’s our turn” .
