From 8 to 13 May the creative thrill of Wine & Thecity returns to Naples. The widespread review - which since 2008 has combined art, wine, fashion and culture - celebrates its 15th edition this year and does so with a week of itinerant tastings in unusual and sometimes unknown places. The protagonist of the exhibition is the wine from the best Italian cellars combined with the pleasure of discovering new urban itineraries between historic sites, private spaces, artists' and designers' ateliers, boutiques, gardens and courtyards. A large moveable feast that every year is confirmed as one of the most awaited events of the Neapolitan spring as Lonely Planet International defined it in 2017.
On May 8, the monumental complex of Santa Maria La Nova in the historic center will host the opening evening: a place rich in history and suggestions, between mystery (it seems that Vlad III, alias Count Dracula is buried here) and masterpieces of art, with the participation of Maestro Carlo Morelli's band and pop choir in the show That's Napoli Live Show. The evening is a journey to discover the historic complex founded in 1279: from the late Renaissance Church - with the remarkable carved and gold-decorated wooden coffered ceiling - to the Refectory, passing through the Sacristy and the Cloister. In the glasses the wines of the Sannio Consorzio Tutela Vini.
On May 9, Wine & Thecity will be in 15 hotels in the city to offer tourists arriving in Naples a glass of welcome: an entirely Neapolitan welcome wine offered by the Consorzio Tutela Vini Vesuvio with a sommelier in each hotel to learn more about the wines of the most famous volcano in the world.
On May 10, the festive carousel of tastings returns to the boutiques of the Chiaia district: glasses, wines and the sommeliers of AIS Napoli will enter over 60 boutiques, jewellers, design showrooms, art galleries. In each address a cellar, a wine to be discovered in combination with the spring-summer fashion collections, DJ sets, special installations, art exhibitions and performances.
On 10 and 11 May the terraces of large hotels and restaurants will be protagonists: a path that gives space to taste, to wine-food pairings, to the culture of good Italian drinking and conviviality.
A special appointment will be in the Rione Sanità, where on Thursday 11 and Friday 12 May, from 6 to 8 pm, Wine&Thecity will tiptoe into the subsoil of Naples, in the Hypogeum of the Crystals, at a depth of eleven meters, to discover the ancient Greek Neapolis, among wall paintings of rare beauty. A hidden and rediscovered place, as precious as the wines that will be offered for tasting.
Friday 12 May, at 6 pm, La Stufa dei Fiori Tisaneria-Bistrot , petit café born from the architectural recovery of the ancient nineteenth-century greenhouse of the Bourbons inside the Real Bosco di Capodimonte , opens its doors to Wine&Thecity for the first time for an exclusive aperitif in the garden, between meadows and monumental trees.
Saturday 13 May, the Neapolitan week of creative intoxication ends in the Vigna di San Martino on the Vomero hill: a jewel of history and nature in the center of the city. The vineyard, once pertaining to the Certosa di San Martino, is now owned by the Morra Foundation which protects its historical and naturalistic heritage: an invaluable heritage of the city which since 2010 the Ministry for Cultural Heritage has declared a national monument. The seven hectares of terraces are planted with vineyards, vegetable gardens, olive trees and orchards and open onto a breathtaking view of the gulf, Vesuvius and the city: an authentic metropolitan vineyard, a small treasure chest of rural wonders that miraculously escaped building speculation thanks to the intervention of its owner, Giuseppe Morra who bought it in 1988 bringing it back to its original splendor of paths and terraces built by the monks over the course of six centuries. The program includes, from 12, a guided walk among the rows with a farmer's picnic.
On May 20 , as part of the OFF City programs , Wine&Thecity lands on the Amalfi Coast for the first time: from the afternoon to evening, the Giardini del Fuenti will be the special set for a walk around tasting between the coast and the sea, along the terraces of vines, lemons and Mediterranean essences. To exalt the wines of the heroic viticulture of the coast, selected by the Vita Salernum Vites Consortium and narrated by the Sommeliers of the Ais Campania, will be the contemporary cuisine Michele De Blasio executive chef of the Fuenti Gardens.
In June it will be the turn of Caserta, Wine & Thecity will touch Capua (June 8 at the Campano Museum) and the small, hidden village Foresta in the Roccamonfina Regional Park. Grand finale in autumn, at La Reggia Designer Outlet with Fall in wine : on 28 and 29 September the creative intoxication of Wine&Thecity brings goblets, wines and sommeliers to the McArthurGlen Group's boutiques in the center of Campania.
Wine&Thecity was born from an idea by Donatella Bernabò Silorata and is an independent project of the Wine&Thecity Association created with the Patronage of the Municipality of Naples and the fundamental support of private sponsors and patrons . The fifteenth edition of Wine&Thecity is supported by La Reggia Designer Outlet McArthurGlen, A&C Motors Audi dealership for Naples and Caserta, Zurich Bank, Molino Caputo, Aceto Andrea Milano. Valuable partners are Ais Campania, Vd Glass, Panificio Antonio Rescigno, Ciro Amodio, Sole Ricevimenti, Vesuvius Magma Gin.
The image of Wine&Thecity 2023 is by the Dabliu agency.
“We cultivate creative intoxication, we set the city in motion, we go to the discovery of places never seen or simply forgotten. We are nomadic and transversal, we speak many languages. We like contamination, we subvert stereotypes. We believe in the plurality of voices and in wine as a cultural expression” is the manifesto of the review which has changed the Neapolitan May since 2008.
