For the artistic combination with the wines of the Alois winery of Pontelatone (CE), Ritmodivino chose a work by Salvador Dali in 1975, “Moises sauvé des eaux”. A lithograph on lambskin made by the Spanish genius, which links art and psychoanalysis. Which, however, lends itself to great in a plot that also involves art and music.
Ritmodivino returns with his usual proposal of musical and artistic combination, a couple of months from the last trip of our magazine in the heart of Irpinia.
After the trip to Sant’Angelo all’Esca visiting the Cavalier Pepe Estate, we at Ritmodivino decided to move to the Caserta area, to Pontelatone, in order to visit the Alois Estate. A trip which excited us, first of all for the stories of wine that the Alois brothers told us on that occasion.
The combination with their Casavecchia of Pontelatone DOC Riserva, wine of 2014 not yet on the market, was not easy. It was a matter of telling a wine by choosing music and art capable of combining tradition and innovation, but above all it was necessary to identify what was able, at the same time, to tell the passion of a family.
A family that has chosen to focus on a little-known vine, but succeeding in enhancing it to the point of making it distinctive of a particular area of Campania, the high Caserta.
Pontelatone, in fact, is a small town in Northern Campania, not far from the mountains of Roccamonfino but south of the Garigliano river, a natural geographical border between the Lazio region and our region.
Today, if we talk about Casavecchia, we inevitably speak of Pontelatone, because the name of the real DOC includes that of the city of Campania. Only the wines born here, made famous all over the world especially by the Alois family, can now boast of this name. In the end we realized that the starting theme could only be that of roots.
From Cohen to Dalì
It all started with Avishaj Cohen, the Israeli bassist inspired by Jaco Pastorius who was the author we chose for the musical combination.
Cohen was born in an Israeli kibbutz and wherever he played he brought with him his strong bond with his land, a land of great difficulty and contrasts. As he himself declared, “growing up in Israel” has made its musical fortune, since Israel has always been a melting pot of peoples.
Many cultures have come together here, from the Arabic to the Jewish to the European, even Indian. As an Israeli, Cohen has also received criticism in the past, especially in 2006 when one of his dublinese concerts was supported and financed by the Israeli embassy.
The criticisms arose about the sensitive issue of the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the Jewish state.
Despite the criticism, Cohen wanted to declare that while not sharing his government’s actions, for him the support of the Tel Aviv government to art was a gesture of great value because it allowed an emerging musician to express himself . And above all, to be able to do it freely.
Since Cohen chose the album Seven Seas in combination with this magnificent Casavecchia, we were also forced to choose a work of art that spoke of roots, but also of the strong link with the water that emerges from the title of this album. Seven Seas in fact means “Seven Seas” and indeed Cohen, in his album, really looks like a stormy sea.
The artist does not renounce any melodic passage, without expiring in the melenso. The master of surrealism, Salvador Dalì, and a lithograph, in particular, of a series of twenty-five, which was not even a year ago exhibited at the Jewish Museum in Bologna, went to help.
Dalì: A Jewish Experience
Dalì and this series of 25 lithographs were the theme of the 2017 exhibition at Palazzo Belloni, in Bologna.
Moses saved from the Waters In 1973, when the 25th anniversary of the birth of Israel fell, Dalì created this series of graphics that portray the founders of the Jewish tribes.
One of these works, Moises Sauvé des Eaux, retraces one of the great events in the history of Israel and the Jewish people, to the point that Abba Eban, then minister of foreign affairs for Israel, said: “O for their ambiguity or their ambivalence these portraits have great significance for us.
Through his abundant and different imagination, Dalí in this album helps to tell the early Israeli civilization, its mystical character and its evolution “.
The rescue of Moses from the waters is the key element of a history that has lasted for five thousand years, the deepest base on which the roots of the Israelite people stand.
The patriarch who, saved from certain death, becomes the messenger of God for the salvation of his people and of all the rest of humanity.
This lithograph summarizes all that we have perceived in the interweaving wine-art-music of this visit to the Alois cellars.
A strong bond with the roots and above all with the water, that fundamental element that makes up for 99% the drink obtained from the fermentation of grape juice, in the absence of the purity of which every wine would be just a book without pages.
