Banca del Vino

In the nineteenth-century cellars of the Agenzia di Pollenzo, the Banca del Vino brings wine into the sphere of cultural memory. Conceived from an idea advanced by Carlo Petrini in the late 1990s, the project preserves bottles from Italian producers as a record of the country's winemaking.

Why it matters

Wine is both a product and a document of place, harvest and craft. The Banca del Vino was created to build that historical memory by selecting and conserving bottles from across Italy. Its relationship with the wider Pollenzo project links the cellars to the educational culture of Slow Food and the University of Gastronomic Sciences.

What to notice

The vaulted cellar setting belongs to the Agenzia's earlier agricultural life. Collections of bottles make visible the diversity of producers, regions and vintages. The idea of a wine bank gives these individual objects a larger meaning: together they form a material record of Italian wine rather than simply an assortment of labels.

Context and history

Pollenzo's nineteenth-century agricultural estate had an important place in the development of Piedmontese red-wine production. A restoration project promoted by Slow Food began in 2000 and was completed in spring 2004, bringing new uses to the Agenzia. The Banca del Vino belongs to that transformation, carrying the site's connection with agriculture into a modern project devoted to wine culture.