On 12th May, 2005, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg declared, as stipulated in the 1993 agreement between the European Union and Hungary, that from 31st March 2007 the denomination “TOCAI” could no longer be used for our Friulian dry white wine due to its similarity in sound to the sweet Hungarian wine Tokaji.

FRIULVINI cannot accept that this grape can enter the vat with its own name TOCAI and, after pressing, come out as simply FRIULANO, a denomination now chosen and adopted by the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia Region.

We oppose the cancellation of eight centuries of history and, with the justified protests of more than 2,000 Friulian wine producers and consumers, we will appeal to the European Court of Justice.

In the meantime, if the appeal does not achieve the hoped for result, from 2007 FRIULVINI will adopt the new provocative label created by Gianfranco Angelico Benvenuto. A label which reads TOCAI without it actually being written.

The trick lies in an acrostic: vertically aligning the words Terre Orientali Carnico Adriatiche Italiane (which mark the borders of the wine’s production) and stressing the initials, the name TOCAI stands out.

And this calendar is dedicated to TOCAI. As if to a star.

Rino Deotto

President Friulvini

THE CALENDAR OF THE LAST TOCAI

Twelve months to tell a story of taste, bouquet and colour. A story born of the seasonal cycles of nature, in harmony with the movements and wisdom of man. A story that has lived on in Friuli for a good eight centuries and which Gianfranco Angelico Benvenuto has translated into photographic images that re-tell it in symbolic evocation.

All this in a story almost worthy of the cinema, beginning with the symbolism of a journey back in time, where the photographer has found an old motor-cycle, the old floral patterns of the traditional Friulian costumes, the straw hats, the vats to press the grapes in, an accordion and, above all, the joyous spirit of the folk festivals, where from ancient times to the present-day, music and dance have gone hand in hand with wine, song and laughter. This is what drives FRIULVINI’s desire to recover the ancient traditions which attest to the paternity and the quality of Friulian Tocai wine, whose denomination is in danger of being lost. Benvenuto’s twelve photos evoke the spirit of this tradition. They do so with the incisiveness of an acute observation of the signs of a modus vivendi which changes with time but which remains faithful to itself. What emerges is a kind of hymn to life and to celebration which, beginning from that old motor-cycle, ridden by a young woman, leads us to the bucolic reality of the grape-picking and the arduous work ever changing with the rhythms of nature.

A grape-picking which lasts symbolically, in the pictures, for a whole year, punctuated by the washing of the feet in ancient basins, the meaning of which is stretched between the sacred and the profane, to then emerge in an intense note of sensuality in the photograph of a kiss.

It is this sensuality that so aptly heralds the scene which, from a close-up of arms holding the vat, moves to a long shot of the girls treading the grapes in a titillating, swirling dance, which then adds those dashes of colour that mark the movement, the laughter and the effort of the young people as they work. From this abstract image, the story returns to figurative scenes focussing on the cold and bluish atmospheres of autumn and winter. Here the overriding chiaroscuro marks the time. Until the same cycle of celebration and work comes round again, and then again forever, carrying the memory of those eight centuries that came before.

Sabrina Zannier