Naples | City Tasting

Another inspired project from the creative gang at 137A – which just happens to include my great and gifted friend Carla Celestino.
A few days ago, as part of the 4-day Wine & The City happening, the multiple talents of the design studio turned the tables – and the words – with their City and The Wine installation, interactive, multisensory, and designed to pull the cork on … Naples itself. As if it were a wine. With over 80 elements to see, hear, smell, touch or taste on an itinerary through the open space of 137A, visitors noted their impressions on a ‘tasting’ card or via an app on their tablets or smartphones.

We judged visual characteristics such as colour and clarity, aroma and taste under headings like balance and intensity, and on through a thicket of formal terminology to age and harmony. Happily, wine expert Tommaso Luongo was on hand to assist when we were baffled by the jargon. That done, our Neapolitan perceptions were digitally matched to an actual wine. Mine was an aglianico. After all the hard work came a glass of the real stuff, supplied by Mustilli. Just for drinking. And then we realised we’d had a lot of fun, taking in a city we thought we knew by dint of an offbeat and revealing tasting game.