Tenute Rubino > Wine of Apulia > Tenute Rubino meets Swiss fine dining

The wines of Apulia landing in Switzerland.

A ray of Apulian sunlight, enshrined in a bottle, will shine on Swiss lands. Indeed, Switzerland will be the first stop of a tour which will take the wines of Salento around the world, on a great journey under the flag of Tenute Rubino.

In this new adventure Luigi Rubino’s firm collaborates with the best Swiss restaurants and wine shops, to promote its wines paired with the most important dishes of Italian and international cuisine. A melting pot of colours and tastes, which will release the aromas of the Mediterranean Sea in the heart of Europe: a tangible proof that Apulian oenological culture goes beyond mere self-complacency, and is finely in tune with new worldwide tendencies.

From this alpine nation of central Europe the tour will make for the other shore of the Atlantic Ocean, to the United States and Canada. But Tenute Rubino’s wines, esteemed banners of Apulia’s oenological renaissance, are quite used to travelling, especially when it represents a bet on their fame and recognisability. A bet which Salento’s wines – genuine, optimist, and authentically convincing – expect to win easily.

The culinary tradition of the Salento and Apulia

These meetings will be centred on the discovery of the best Italian and international gastronomic traditions and of their different cultural identities, with the intercession of the aromas, emotions, passions and significance of Apulian wine. A bond between Swiss restaurants and Tenute Rubino’s best wines, which will highlight the identity of autochthonic grape varieties as well as the beauty, the history and the traditional heritage of this Italian region, where viticulture is as old as civilization itself.

Salento, the easternmost tip of the Bel Paese, is the heel of Italy which protrudes between the Ionic and the Adriatic seas, towards the Balkans, Greece and southeastern Europe. Destiny and vocation have made this land a fertile cradle for vines and wine: altitude and soil composition, solar exposition and irradiation, temperature range and ventilation, all combine to create a kaleidoscope of microclimatic and territorial conditions which variate significantly every few dozen kilometers. A bright microcosm of Italy: this is what Apulia represents for Italians, and for whoever discovers it. It is Italy’s sunniest region, inhabited by genuine people which have not given up their traditions.

Apulia today is a laboratory of Italian oenology and gastronomy, bustling like few other regions under the twin flags of innovation and tradition. Its complex history, as well as the various civilizations which have risen and fallen in its lands – the Greeks and the Romans, then the Lombards and the Byzantines, followed by the Normans, the House of Anjou and the Crown of Aragon – have all contributed to the composite identity of Apulia and its people and to the uninterrupted thread of its history, dyed in the dark and intense red of Negroamaro, or in the striking brilliant red of Primitivo and Susumaniello. Historically this is a land of great reds and rosés, but the memorable whites produced in Apulia and Salento should not come as a surprise; indeed, Tenute Rubino’s superb interpretations of Malvasia Bianca and Vermentino will also take part to this promotional voyage.  

Italy and Switzerland

Italy and Switzerland are not only neighbouring nations, but also closely amalgamated ones: among the foreign communities in Switzerland, the Italian one is the most numerous. Furthermore, the Alps have always represented an important bridge between these two countries: the transversal alpine valleys have ever been a vital passageway for culture, taste and passions. This heritage is not the only cultural baggage brought across the border nowadays: recently the Italian lifestyle itself – the result of reinvented and valorised millenary traditions – has been taking this northern route. A great culinary civilization, capable of conveying a rich and moving image, bound to a culture which is absolutely unique in the world.

Apulian wine will adapt perfectly to the Italian and international cuisine offered by the best Swiss restaurants. Well-structured, full-bodied red wines are a perfect match for decisive, strong flavours such as game or seasoned cheese. Swiss cuisine, intended as the culinary art of the Swiss Confederation, is a body of gastronomic traditions which varies from canton to canton. Linguistic and cultural differences have a direct influence on each canton’s cuisine: French influences prevail in francophone Switzerland, just as German influences predominate in German-speaking regions and Italian influences (Lombard ones in particular) prevail in the Italian areas. In such a variegated frame, Tenute Rubino’s wines – within the Grandi vini di Puglia (Great wines of Apulia) project – will constitute a perfect agent of convivial union. Thus the discovery and rediscovery of territorial values will take place in Switzerland, matching Apulian wines to Italian cuisine; thus the diversified panorama of Swiss traditional cuisine will represent a stimulating laboratory of exciting pairings, for the memorable labels of Tenute Rubino.

 An event not to be missed by Swiss and international wine lovers, whom will have a chance to enjoy Apulian oenology and gastronomy right on their doorstep; a consuption occasion which will elicit images of distant lands and seas. Because wine, can convey the extraordinary cultural heritage of Salento just as well as the emotions evoked by it.