Donatella Cinelli Colombini, art historian and wine woman

She founded the wine tourism association (Movimento del turismo del vino) and invented the “open wine cellars” event. Her passion for the Bacchus drink is always astonishing

by L. C.

Born in Siena in 1953, she had her master degree in medieval art history. After five years of research on the minor arts in the gothic and renaissance periods, in 1984 she dedicated her efforts to the family farm in Montalcino (Tuscany), where she remained for 14 years. In 1993 she founded the wine tourism association (Movimento del turismo del vino) and invented the “open wine cellars” event, which diffused in short time the enotourism in Italy. Donatella Cinelli Colombini was promoter of the first courses for “wine ways” guides and now she teaches at the post-degree masters in tourism and agriculture management how transforming cellars in tourist destinations. In 1998 her parents gave her the Fattoria del Colle farm in Trequanda, with a wonderful agrotourism center, and the Casato Prime Donne farm in Montalcino, where she realized two new cellars and produced a series of high quality wines. These cellars are the first in Italy where the tourists receive the same care of great wines. From 2001 she is Councilor of the city of Siena for tourism and she introduced the “urban trekking” initiative. In 2003 she won the Oscar as the best Italian wine producer by the Ais Roma-Bibenda association. In 2003 she published the Manuale del Turismo del vino (Manual for wine tourism) and in 2007 the Marketing del turismo del vino (Marketing for wine tourism). From 2008 she is vice-president of the Italian Enoteca.

Why do you decide to make business in farming?
I grew up in it, like a fish in the water.

Do you feel more a peasant, a farmer or a business man?
A business man.

A definition of farming.
Nursery, cultivation and processing of land fruits.

An adjective for defining the world of farming.
Slow.

A keyword for the future of farming.
Naturalness.

A model men.
Sister Ginetta, the responsible of the soup kitchen of Siena for the San Vincent of Paoli order.

Someone to… go to the hell.
There are a lot of people that should go to the hell, from Osama bin Laden to Hugo Chàvez, but no one that I know personally.

A book concerning the rural world you’d suggest to read.
For sure my Marketing of wine tourism!

Your favorite book.
The fifth mountain by Paolo Coelho and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.

Your favorite song or composition.
Senza fine by Gino Paoli.

Your unforgettable movie.
Life is beautiful by Begigni.

What would you like to find after passing away?
The paradise.