The Masi prize has just celebrated its 30th anniversary with awards to an actor, a restaurateur, a scientist, a Canadian writer and the founder of a medical charity in Africa.
Ezio Rivella (right), chairman of the Masi Civiltà del Vino Prize selection committee, presents a bottle of Masi Costasera Amarone, to the 2011 Prize winner, Jacques Orhon, the Canadian journalist.
One of Italian wine’s most prestigious wine awards, the Masi Civiltà Veneta Prize aims to honour not only the wines and the winemakers produced by the Veneto terroir, but also the wider talent that comes from the region.
As Isabella Bossi Fedrigotti, president of the Masi Foundation, said, ‘the work of the jury is one of in-depth enquiry in search of less obvious individuals who are less high-profile but nonetheless exemplary in their work.’
The awards were presented at a ceremony last weekend at the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona.
Luigi Mazzucato, the founder and director of the medical charity Doctors with Africa (CUAMM), won the International Grosso d’Oro Veneziano Prize.
The International Masi Prize Civiltà del Vino went to French-Canadian journalist and writer Jacques Orhon, ‘the most authoritative ambassador and connoisseur of Italian wine in the Francophone world’.
The Masi Prize Civiltà Veneta went to actor and cinematographer Giuseppe Battiston, Arrigo Cipriani, owner of the renowned Harry’s Bar in Venice, and scientist Massimo Marchiori, inventor of the Google algorithm.
Sandro Boscaini, president of Masi Agricola and vice president of the Masi Foundation, said, ‘If it is true that wine is one of the most important benchmarks of a region, it is equally true that the region and its culture give credit and value to the wine and its producers: this is the founding principle from which the Masi Prize Civilta Veneta derives, to reinforce the idea that in Venetian culture, the traditional wines of the region have their place.’
The Masi Foundation was set up in 2001 – 25 years after the foundation of the Masi Civiltà Veneta Prize – to ‘promote the territory, cultural heritage, creative genius and productive capacity of Venetian civilisation, picking out the people who express this culture at its best in their individual fields.’
Written by Adam Lechmere
