WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP OF YELLOW COLOR, or «Yellow Road» is turning on lights

I have tried several times to hold this championship. But either the color was not very yellow, or the teams were not in shape, or the world was simply not ready for this unusual championship… and the games were put off for some indefinite time. But idea to hold – if not championship, then at least a road among the hills, lavender fields and vines hasn’t left me. The essence of this championship is not meeting with friends on the sportsground, but rather meeting friends on the terrace of a beautiful villa among vines, so that we could sit at a modestly served table (but with a glass of good wine) and enjoy spectacular southern sunset. As years were passing, organization of such championship seemed more difficult – we grow more pessimistic with age – and only pictures of wine, vines and villas seen online kept me interested in the idea.

As a painter who created numerous artworks and accomplished a serious of interesting projects at home and abroad, I tried to get in touch with existing art centers in France (Cassis, Arles, Menerbes) but realized soon that e-mail exchanges with art bureaucrats is hopeless waste of time. Then the idea of this road was born…

Why should a traveler fill in applications, and wait for replies to e-mails for months, not to mention lining up for the forms. The color of the road must be yellow. No doubt.

The yellow disc of the sun, the yellow sand (even on the beach it doesn’t get any bluer being close to sea water), the yellow air of summer evening in Italy, or Spain, or Portugal (it seems to have a slight pink tone in Provence). And the wine of yellow color - which for some reason everyone keeps calling white – should become the main sport tool to make chances of all participants equal. As a reward for myself and my friends for the work that I will have accomplished I came up with idea to stage opera “Yellow Sound” by Wassily Kandinsky. It’s often called a stage composition. If you look it up in the internet you may get confused by different views on it and you would probably end up remembering only its name. The painter, however, explains why he called it an opera in his book “Concerning spiritual in art”. The notion of “yellow” is also in the core of theoretical development of this book. Yellow forms “first great contrast” in pair with blue: yellow is warmth, orientation towards the audience, the movement outwards, while the blue is cold, orientation from the audience, the movement inwards. So colors are not as simple as you might think!

Someone might think that our task to pave the yellow road is more modest than creation of opera by Wassily Kandinsky. Do not jump to conclusions, my friends! Once the play has been written, the author may relax. But we are set to accomplish a task which is both unusual and will take indefinite time, since yellow color has no boundaries: neither geographical, nor theoretical, nor visual. Finally I would like to see realization of saying, which is as old as Rome, that art is a wine, pardon I meant to say that wine is also an art.

As I hope that that unity of arts and wine will find reflection in this project, we might call it “Yellow Sound” but thus we would interfere and even break the plan of Wassily Kandinsky. Without telling about The Yellow Sound, a complicated topic of arts and wine wouldn’t be well-developed. As a strange coincidence, The Yellow Sound remains a theatrical production that has no set boundaries. In the same way, the winemaker always has a goal, but something beyond his will, sometimes even against his will, invisibly takes part in wine production. And we will not give detailed review of wines, that’s the job of sommelier, because the word “bouquet” creates different images in the minds of an artist and a winemaker. We will tell about wines of yellow color which we tasted and liked. We will also give a word to owners of famous (and not very famous) wineries. And this article features interview with Chiara Soldati, the owner of a world-famous winery La Scolca.

Choosing opera The Yellow Sound as the hegemon of our project, we choose high art as our landmark, and will try to go along our road, constantly looking back at this landmark. Therefore The Yellow Road is not only a road through wineries with wine of yellow color, but also a way to discover the beautiful. So we’re done with the naming. The Yellow Road.

And our Yellow Road is a real road with real products: wine, paintings, sculptures, exhibitions. And real meetings with friends. I have a gut feeling that we should start from the north of Italy and go all the way down to Sicily. We might come by Pantelleria, an island with delicious sweet wine Passito di Pantelleria. Then our Road will take us to France passing through Sardinia and Corsica. We’ll visit Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon. But Burgundy is also worth visiting, as there are wonderful yellow wines there. So our Road won’t be straight but winding. And along the way we’ll choose the places to host painting exhibitions or even open a sculpture park. As for stage production of The Yellow Sound, this is the task for such a seasoned choreographer as Angelica Cholina.

Structurally each article in this series will have a review of one or several wineries as well as analysis of one or several contemporary artworks, exhibited on famous art forums, such as Art Basel. It may also feature an exhibition recommended for wineries and so on.

Taking into consideration vast interest to the topic of arts and wine both in Lithuania and abroad, the English version online will accompany the original Russian articles on print.

The history of making white wine (yellow), which you recommend as a participant in the "Yellow Road"

Everything takes place with harmony and with punctuality that only well-tested mechanisms may show.

The estate La Scolca was taken over between 1917 and 1919 by the great-grandfather of Giorgio Soldati who leads today the company together with his daughter Chiara, the fifth generation shown to the third millennium.

In ninety years of activity the passion for wine has turned into profession, but the passion for Gavi has not tailed off...

La Scolca Gavi Wine has become a cult and has conquered the world, but has never betrayed its origins and its characteristics.

The past and the future live together in this company that combines the best naturalness of who live in the world always with the speed and who look forward with the vision of courageous captains: in this case the name of the family “Soldiers” has a special symbolic meaning.

La Scolca stemmed from the name “Sfurca” or “Watch out” and the farmhouse that stood there in the past was just a lookout post. These names reflect the full proud and tenacious character of the owners and their wines.

In 1919, ownership was partly covered by forests, and the rest was cultivated. The intuition of Soldati’s family was well-studied: to plant vineyards in early twentieth century with Cortese grapes in an area exclusively suited before to cultivation of red berried vineyards: in this case again, the name of the company was prophetic. The production became soon major technical and entrepreneurial activities.

La Scolca is therefore the oldest company in the area, for continuity of the management by the same family, but at the same time is the most modern one. Giorgio Soldati has proved a valuable and innovative entrepreneur: he is the creator of wines and sparkling success without betraying loyalty to the “Gavi” region and to the vine kind. But the biggest challenge he has taken together with his daughter was to maintain the leadership over the years, strengthening the image and notoriety of La Scolca a throughout the World and keeping its philosophy to the highest quality possible.

- Do you give preference (is it important for you, as for a winemaker) the color of wine?

Yes the colour of wine is very important to value the wine.

- What is your favorite wine? And why?

• My favourite wine is French, I love Chablis because it reminds me of our Gavi in the flavors and in the minerality

- Is there a ritual important for you when you take wine (and if yes, then what is it)?

• In life there are moments where you do not need words to express the perfection of a moment and the emotions that are released into the harmony of a special meeting of thoughts.

The energy and the intensity that only big dreams can give, naturalness that only the choices that come from the heart can give. Looking back over the years, spent between vines, light and colors passes in my eyes and they bring me back to a dream.

We were born winegrowers, you can become it, technically, but it’s not possible to live the wine and inner soul’s land if not living, day by day, the slow passing of life and vine’s seasons, in a symbiosis that is rediscovered and reveals itself tasting the wines made by this dance that takes place every year the same, but always new.

- Do you have a personal collection of wines (and do you include other producers' wines)?

• Yes, I have a library wine collection of La Scolca’s wines

- Next year you will have a wonderful anniversary, do you plan any cultural events in connection with this?

The next year will be a very important anniversary for La Scolca: 100 years. We will plan a worldwide program that will include cultural events.