Wine Savior: Banco Del Vino

Is it possible to drink a wine into extinction? Concerned, a consortium of 280 Italian wine producers and the international organization Slow Food have created the Banca del Vino, a 50,000-bottle wine bank in the century-and-a-half-old cellars of the Agenzia di Pollenzo estate in Piedmont. For a fee of about $20, visitors can have small tastes of three wines from the past decade. The bank also offers samples of harder-to-find bottles, such as a magnificent 1977 Fontanafredda Barolo, doling them out carefully so future visitors can try some as well (P. Vittorio Emanuele, 13 fraz. Pollenzo; 011-39-0172-458-418).

Published October 2005