Back in 1983, the world was still under the latent threat of the ongoing Cold War, and the future fall of Berlin's wall would have seemed then an impossible achievement. That same year in Cormòns, in the beautiful Collio hills, a remarkable idea was carried out by the members of Cantina Produttori Cormòns: the World’s Vineyard, a symbol of human brotherhood, whence ultimately came one of their distinctive products, the Wine of Peace, whose success overcome Friuli Venezia Giulia's borders long time ago.
A story really worth telling, that started from the cooperation of winegrowers from all over the world who sent to Cormòns hundreds of vines: they've been gradually planted there, thus giving birth to a unique vineyard hosting an incredible amount of vine varieties from different countries and continents. The first harvest took place two years after, in 1985, when over 500 enthusiastic pickers ventured through the World's Vineyard and set their hands to the newborn bunches of grapes. The following year, the very first Wine of Peace was ready: to decorate its labels, Cantina Produttori Cormòns called famed artists such as Zoran Music, Arnaldo Pomodoro and Enrico Baj and that established a tradition for the years to come.

The Wine of Peace eventually led, in 1997, to a music festival of its own, Jazz&Wine of Peace. Friuli's Eastern frontier with present Slovenia had been on fire because of the ex-Jugoslavian conflict and the event was created by Circolo Culturale Controtempo to promote peace, also by collaborating with Slovenia to organize the concerts. The festival each year summons to Cormòns renowned jazz players from all over the world and the audience, too, is mostly international gathering fans from Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia and lately also from Norway and Japan. The event always wraps up with a final toast on stage, cheering on the annual Wine of Peace together.

Where art meets wine
Since it was first sent to every civil and religious Head of State on 9th April 1986 (being the Italian national airline Alitalia the official carrier), the Wine of Peace has always been produced in a set of three bottles and every year international distinguished painters, illustrators, sculptors have been drawing its labels, making it a collectors' delight.

Its combination of peace, art and wine fascinated some of the greatest 20th century Italian artists such as Salvatore Fiume, Aligi Sassu, Emilio Vedova, Giacomo Manzù, Emilio Tadini, Paolo Menon, stylist Roberto Capucci and also foreign ones like Swedish Erik Dietman, Japanese Hidetoshi Nagasawa, U.S. Robert Rauschenberg, Colombian Fernando Botero and Belgian Jean-Michel Folon. Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo and Yoko Ono too joined in, organizing an extraordinary permanent exhibition with high-level artworks on display.
Over the years, all these efforts paid off with a few prestigious acknowledgements. The labels “Picolit – Vino d’Autore” and “Cava” by graphic designer and painter Arrigo Buttazzoni won the “Etichetta d’Oro” (golden label) at the 4th and the 5th edition of the National Labels Contest by the International Wine Label Museum in Cupramontana, near Ancona, the land of Verdicchio.

The strong link between art and wine is pretty evident even in Cantina Produttori Cormòns' cellar. Its Slavonian oak barrels have been decorated by some great contemporary Friulian artists like Giorgio Celiberti, Carlo Ciussi, Luciano Ceschia, Silvano Spessot and many others, and the result is astonishing: the cellar has become a very unusual, marvellous underground art gallery where wines can rest in their artistic “beds” until they're ready.

About Cantina Produttori Cormòns
With more than 120 winegrowers members, Cantina Produttori di Cormòns is a solid wine-making institution in Friuli Venezia Giulia, founded in 1968 in Cormòns, near Gorizia. Its members' vineyards extend over 350 hectares and 2 millions bottles per year come out of Cantina Produttori's plant (70% white wines and 30% red wines). Located in the Collio area, on the Oriental Hills near the Slovenian border and the Isonzo river, Cormòns plays an important role (harbouring more than 60 winemaking firms) in a land devoted to wine growing since ancient times and home to many DOC areas - Denomination of Controlled Origin, such as DOC Collio, DOC Friuli, DOC Friuli Isonzo, DOC Colli Orientali.

A detailed method to establish a vineyard's health and potential, and how to improve both. It's the Bigot Index and it's been developed by Giovanni Bigot, a Friulian agronomist and researcher and founder of Perleuve (his wine consulting firm based in Cormons), who's been collecting data about vineyards and vines for over twenty years and decided to turn all those information into a tool to help winemakers enhance their wines' quality.
The Bigot Index was implemented officially in 50 wine firms all around Italy one year ago, and recently they have been awarded the Bigot Certificate for their vineyards' performances. The results were made public during a ceremony in Castello di Cigognola (a winemaking firm based in an ancient castle near Pavia, in Lumbardy) at the beginning of February and among those who scored over 90 out of 100 points there are a few winemakers from Friuli Venezia Giulia: Vigne di Zamò's Refosco Buttrio vineyard (in Rosazzo, Udine), Sturm's Tocai Bert vineyard (in Cormons, in the Collio area) and Russiz Superiore's Sauvignon Lungo Strada vineyard. Other excellent performances were recorded in Piedmont, Tuscany and Sardinia.
«The method I developed through years of observations and data collecting, during its first year of enforcement directly on the field has been welcomed warmly by many firms who are well aware that great wines come from great vineyards – Giovanni Bigot says – Many winemakers showed interest in it, because applying in a vineyard the method that underlies the Bigot Index helps point out the tools needed to improve its grapes' quality».

The Bigot Index: how it works and the App 4Grapes®
The winning feature is that the Bigot Index takes into consideration not single but multiple factors all at once, considering those ones who affect directly a wine's quality in the vineyard: production, exposed leaves' surface (SFE – Superficie Foliare Esposta), the ratio between leaves and production (SFE/kg), grapes' health, grape variety, the grape bunch's shape, hydro-stress, strength, biodiversity and microorganisms, the vineyard's age.
The goal is to “measure” a vineyard's quality by resting on reliable scientific data which are easily-attained thanks to the App 4Grapes®, developed by Bigot. The app allows constant monitoring of the actual situation as to grapevine diseases, quality and production. All the people who work in the vineyard can use it as a mean of observation and data collecting: «We receive all the data through the App 4Grapes®, then we process them and send back a form detailing all factors and final results for every vineyard – Giovanni Bigot explains – In our Certificate we include all the infos, the vineyard's evaluation and which elements need to be improved, as well as the positive aspects».

The database on which the app relies for its functioning is huge. More than 80,000 georeferencing observations – most of which complete with photos – have been collected over 20 years directly in 2,000 vineyards belonging to 250 wine firms, all over Italy and abroad, and they're now stored in the app. Besides, also one thousand wines' evaluations were made along with winemakers to set the standards. And thanks to the amount of data and to the pictures taken, the app can also spot grape diseases, thus allowing the owners to act rapidly in order to tackle them and limit possible damages.
And to further fulfill his purpose, alongside Perleuve Giovanni Bigot last year founded his very own Academy 4Grapes®, the first Italian online academy aiming to educate specialists in vineyard's monitoring through observation and implementation of the App 4Grapes®.

It's already Carnival time! In Italy the celebrations usually start on Thursday and end the following Tuesday, the so called “martedì grasso” or Mardi Gras, and that will be exactly next Tuesday, on February 16th. Though the most famous Carnival in Italy is in Venice, even Friuli Venezia Giulia has its own renowned celebrations which still bring on ancient customs, like the Carnival in Sauris, in the Carnic mountains. Unfortunately Due to Covid-19 restrictions, this year celebrations won't be as usual, but in spite of that the carnevalesque spirit is very much alive!
According to the Roman Catholic tradition, Carnival is the last chance to be fool and glutton before the beginning of Lent, the 40 days-fast preceding Easter which starts right after it, on Ash Wednesday. Its origin roots back to ancient Greek and Roman rituals like the Dyonisian ones and the Saturnalia, which generally marked a period of breaking free from the law and chaos when all excess is allowed (especially those about food and wine drinking), before turning back to business as usual: that's why in Italy they say “a Carnevale ogni scherzo vale” (during Carnival, any prank is allowed). Floats' parades and mask-wearing were also a distinctive feature of such feasts, during which public order was temporarily suspended, and those same features are still alive nowadays with multicoloured floats' parades on the streets and people, especially children, hanging around with all sorts of disguises.

The magical Carnival in Sauris
Carnival tradition in Sauris, or “Carnevale Saurano” has very peculiar traits which make it differ from other Italian and Friulian ones. They have their own typical masked characters known as Rölar and Kheirar. Rölar is the one who gathers all the people in the streets to mark the beginning of Carnival celebrations on Thursday, summoning them with the sound of his röln (bells). Everyone floods in and parties all over the town and through the surrounding woods along with the Carnival parade, with people holding lanterns to light up the night in a magical atmosphere. Then, just as Mardi Gras is about to end, Kheirar seals the ritual by sweeping the streets, a symbolic gesture meant to swipe winter away and welcome spring instead, due to arrive as Easter comes. Everybody wears wooden masks with stark facial features (for men) or veils (for women), usually matched with old worn-out trousers and dresses, hats and coloured paper flowers, and masks are usually split in two categories: nice ones and ugly ones.
In Friuli Venezia Giulia there are unique Carnival parades also in Resia Valley, located between the Julian Alps and Prealps on the border with Slovenia, and in Muggia, a Venice-like small town near Trieste where floats' parade is usually grand and majestic. But to see all those beautiful and funny parades, unfortunately we'll have to wait until next year...

Photo of Sauris Carnival taken from the website www.sauris.org

Craft spirits completely “made in Friuli”. In 2016 Federico Cremasco, a long-time barman with a passion for natural herbs, founded the spirits brand Fred Jerbis (“Fred's herbs” in Friulian dialect) starting from his own herbal laboratory in his native Travesio, a mountain town in the Pordenone area. In just five years he succeeded to bring the production up to 40,000 bottles per year, placing his products in fifteen countries around the world.
Now the business aims to redefine and refine its productive process, so Cremasco recently launched the crowdfunding campaign “Jerbis Ventûr” (“tomorrow's herbs”) to achieve a few main goals: the making of a distillery and a botanical garden in Polcenigo, one of Friuli's most beautiful historical hamlets (where Cremasco already runs the pub “Hamingway”), an increase of the cultivated area in Polcenigo and Travesio and a larger product-placement plan on major EU countries' markets. The campaign already raised over 182,000 euros, more than double the amount requested.
The need is for the process to be even more artisanal and natural as possible, while expanding the production. All ingredients are already “km zero”, with some herbs being organically grown by Cremasco himself in Travesio and other ones provided by local farmers based near Pordenone – with juniper berries and citrus fruits coming from Italy.
The final purpose is to broaden the growing area in the Friulian Prealps, far from pollution, in order to have even more herbs close at hand, as an ultimate guarantee of the very source of Fred Jerbis spirits' natural essences, and of their quality.

It all began with a gin
«Everything comes from my passion for plants and botanicals-based products – says Federico Cremasco – so I focused on gin, considering the very first juniper infusions were experimented in Italy. In the medical manual “Compendium Salerni” by the medical school in Salerno, they talked about the benefits deriving from juniper back in 1055 a.C. So I thought it possible to make a juniper-based spirit that would represent Friuli and Italy». Thus was born GIN43, a distilled gin with 43 different botanicals extracted through five methods.
Cremasco has a thing for experimentation, trying to combine new flavours and ancient recipes (he also got some inspiration from a 1946 spirits' recipe book), thanks to his deep herbal knowledge which also allows him to grow herbs and plants on his own. That's how he created all Fred Jerbis' products, like FERNET 25 SINGLE BARREL, a bitter with 25 botanicals and aged in chestnut tree-barrels, or VERMUT 16 SINGLE BARREL with 16 local botanicals. And every year, they choose a local herb for a limited edition line, as the camomile gin back in 2017. The task is clear: «Making craft spirits in limited quantities, only relying on first class ingredients». And a distillery of their own in Polcenigo would grant Fred Jerbis a thorough supervision of all the productive process, thus keeping a high standard quality while looking forward to new markets.