Landscapes and Brunello: five Nobel winners at Montalcino

Porta al CasseroMontalcino, its landscapes, its artistic beauty, history and nectar, Brunello wine.  It  is a magic land, a land of dreams that many have celebrated. Italian and international personalities have come here to pay homage to the city and its delicacies. Many Nobel Prize winners have also come to Montalcino, to speak of it and take home the city in their hearts. First of all, Rita Levi Montalcini,  scientist, who dedicated her whole  life to research and won the  Nobel Prize for medicine in 1986.  Since 1992 she has been an honorary citizen of the city. “We decided to give her honorary citizenship”, says Mauro Guerrini, the former mayor of Montalcino, who at the time gave her the keys to the city,  “when we discovered that her last name came from the fact that some of her ancestors lived here”. The scientist called Montalcino “a beautiful city full of history”. Cox Robert Merton, Nobel Prize for Economics in 1997, came to Montalcino and here, in an interview with Castello Banfi addressed the issue of financial tools for Italian wine, declaring that his favorite wine is Brunello. Then there is  the story of Saul Bellow, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, who rendered a perfect description of the city and its nectar: ​​”I’ve never had a soft spot for views, but the beauty penetrated the armor of my twentieth century soul, so hostile to landscapes … The desire for Brunello never goes away. The desire to return to it is the same speed at which it fills the glass”.  “Montalcino, a town untouched, unaltered, clean shapes, that remains in the Middle Ages. And the fortress is the symbol of the city’s history”.  This is how Dario Fo, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997 and who in 1986 presented  a show at the Fortezza in Montalcino, described this corner of paradise. But there is also Carducci, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1906 who, in a letter to the Countess Ersilia Caetani Lovatelli in 1886, wrote: “I cleaned my throat  with the wine of Argiano, which is very, very good”.

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