At home in Tuscany

Hideyuki Miyakawa's life story sounds like a movie. Our story begins in the Japanese city of Maebashi in the year 1960. Two young university students set out to explore the world on their motorcycles. They spend half a year traveling through India, Pakistan, and Persia before reaching Europe. They arrive in Rome just in time for the opening of the Olympic Games, but now they're running out of money, prompting the two explorers to make a longer stop than intended. The 22-year-old Hideyuki starts working as a reporter for a Japanese car magazine. When I came to Italy, I immediately realized that this was a very special place. «Everywhere I looked, I saw culture, art, and style,» he says, looking back. What he finds most fascinating is the simple elegance of Italian design. In the fall, he travels to the Salone dell'Automobile in Turin in order to report on the latest trends to car fans back home. The cheerful young Japanese reporter immediately attracts attention. Before he knows it, he's working on legendary designs for Ferrari and Fiat. HHowever, his ultimate dream was still unrealized: «I wanted to see this kind of car driving around in my home country too», says Hideyuki, «Japanese cars in those days just weren't expressive.» So he sets about bringing Italian style to the Land of the Rising Sun. And he succeeds, too – less than ten years later, all Japanese car manufacturers are using Italian bodies. Today, the Japanese designer lives at his Tuscan winery, Bulichella. He is still passionate about the idea of bringing the best and most beautiful things from Italy to the rest of the world. Today it's no longer sleek cars but elegant, authentic wines. But they have plenty of horsepower, too.

The mild air gently caresses our skin, the sun's rays make the happiness hormones dance. It smells of freshly mown grass, the bees are buzzing and the eye is offered a colorful abundance. Temptation and seduction are in the air, everything wants to be tried. We travel, expand our horizons, leave our comfort zone sometimes. Be it jumping into the ice-cold mountain lake or flirting in the outdoor pool. Now is the time to enjoy life with all senses... and let it tingle! That's why for us summer is the time for sparkling wines. On a hot summer afternoon it refreshes us, at the roof terrace party it animates us, on a promising date it provides additional tingling from the glass. The days are long and there's always something to celebrate. A bottle of sparkling wine in the fridge and you're always ready for a spontaneous garden party. We toast to summer and the many little moments of joy it gives us! As enriching and sparkling as the dancing bubbles rising in a glass of Prosecco. Cheers!

Herdade do Esporão is one of the most popular Portuguese wineries. Like hardly any other winery, the winery promotes creativity and change. This is beautifully demonstrated in the Reserva wines, Esporão's drinkable calling card. Year after year, the label is redesigned by an artist. In the current vintage, the works are by Jorge Queiroz. The Lisbon native is known for his dreamlike, multi-layered drawings. As we look at them, we sink into our own world of thought and discover new perspectives again and again. Making a work of art for a wine bottle was a special challenge for Jorge Queiroz: «The image will be present in the most diverse situations. This gives my work a different dimension», explains the artist. The image is not as sure of the attention of the person looking at it as in an art exhibition, he says: «I want the label to become a topic of conversation.» The wine label as an art form? In the past, it simply served to inform what was in the bottle. Today, visual design undeniably plays a role in buying and drinking a wine. It is intended to arouse feelings and expectations. The work of Jorge Queiroz on the Esporão Reserva takes us to the origins of wine. We dive into the millennia-old drinking culture and continue to write this history with our individual wine moment.