My passion, today love, for wine began in 2013… just two months after having completed “my first forty years”.
A degree as accountant and a certificate of the British Council that allowed me to work for about 20 years as responsible import-export for various Companies of the Campania, a sedentary job that made me feel professionally dissatisfied.
In 2008 my only and wonderful daughter was born and as it often happens a woman is forced to stop, and I stopped… It was also the world economic crisis, in short, we all know very well the economic situation in that period.
Soon the hardships began, I was not used to being at home and I missed my economic independence, so I started to work hard to find something to save me from depression.
It was October 2013, I discovered the world of wine by chance also because until that moment I thought I was teetotal. A friend of mine, who worked in that field, told me about it and I became curious until I did some research on my own and since then the wine has not left my life.
In March 2015 I participated in my first Vinitaly, I left with the plane on Monday “confused and happy” as Carmen Consoli sang to meet with my first mentors: Tony and Romeo who helped with foreigners approaching their stand, I thought: I can combine my knowledge of English to my passion for wine! I will never forget my first Vinitaly, all those interesting people, the laughs in the clubs in Verona and the chance to know new places, people, wines… I came home happy, I finally understood what I wanted to do when I grew up!
I started to get passionate about the vines of my land, Campania, and then I also discovered those of the rest of Italy and in 2017 I decided to enroll in the Ais Sommelier course here in Caserta, and just in that period, among those school classes I met Lella, which became my partner in the WineJoy project.
It was a fantastic period, my passion grew more and more… I visited wineries and I was enchanted to walk among the rows and listen to those producers who every time told me a different story, every place, every person, every wine was different from each other. I still remember that wonderful Monday spent with my colleagues of the course in Cilento in the Winery of Silvia Imparato, the woman who managed with her elegance and great sensitivity to make us excited all, and the lamb she cooked personally was really good, a lunch in which there was a vertical of her Montevetrano… but who thought about wine, we were fascinated by her!
I started for a while to organize visits to wineries, my desire was to let people know what was really behind a bottle of wine so the effort, the difficulties and many times the loneliness that accompany a small wine producer, People should have known that wine is a serious matter when behind there is a project based on values and not on mere market interests.
Over the years, with so many wines and other Vinitaly behind me I felt a bit tired of what I drank, I noticed that the wines were all beginning to be the same and then I looked around better and discovered the existence of a person I found on the net, that spoke against the current, that had the courage to criticize topics such as scores, guides, critics “to which we no longer have to delegate anything” . (to be continued…)
