The authentic Tuscan experience

When you’ve had people like the artist Donatello and King Henry VIII buying your wines, you probably don’t need to talk too much about their virtues. Erika Ribaldi, Frescobaldi’s area manager for Asia Pacific, who’s been based in Bangkok for several years, begs to disagree.
A loquacious and confident lady with a passion for muay thai, Ribaldi is among the city’s smoothest toastmasters. At dinners, she entertains diners with her story of sunny Tuscany, home to Frescobaldi and has inspired more than a few to take their holidays in Italy. She needs to try harder, she admits, given that she’s very much in the minority in the robust male-dominated environment of the global winemaking business.
Her kind of a perfect wine dinner always begins with a cheerful “buono sera” and a Frescobaldi story filled with fun, jokes and laughs.
“A wine dinner is to entertain, not to sell,” says Ribaldi. “It’s my job to create the right atmosphere, so that guests feel they are dining under the Tuscan sun.”
Those who’ve never been to Italy will have trouble visualising Tuscany, so Ribaldi tells them to picture Chiang Mai, with lots of gentle farmers.
She did exactly that with chef Igor Macchia from Piedmont in her wine dinner at the recent World Gourmet Festival at the Four Seasons Bangkok
“Talking about wine purely and the 700 years history of Frescobaldi would be boring,” she says, “because that’s too complicated for diners. But still you need to try to make them understand a little bit about your wine. And it has to be easy to understand.”
A glass of wine needs to remind you that you are Venice and you feel like a superstar, she explains. To make it easier for Thais to understand, she takes a light-hearted approach to wine appreciation.
Her style is always to flirt with the ladies and empower the gentlemen.
“I will have to make them smile so I need to flirt with the girls. If I have to flirt with men, the ladies will get upset. But I’ll make sure I empower the men,” she says.
To the diners’ delight, Ribalid likens chianti to Hermes and the super-Tuscans to Dolce & Gabbana.
“The girls will be able to easily relate to these comparisons. To the men, a super Tuscan is like a Ferrari,” she says.
For dangerous, but fresh and friendly women like herself, Ribaldi recommends Pinot Gris, “very dangerous, it’s like driving in Rome.”
Sometimes, Ribaldi can be grumpy and austere, yet beautiful like chianti.
“I will stop talking when the first plate is coming to the table. Afterwards, people want to enjoy the food and enjoy talking among themselves. If you keep talking, the food gets cold. Cold food is not good,” Ribaldi notes.
But it’s really hard to ignore the 700 years of Frescobaldi’s winemaking history.
After 30 generations, the Frescobaldi family continues to produce great Tuscan wines in five estates. For more than seven centuries, the family has been actively involved in the culture, commerce and finance, and with history of Italy and of Tuscany in particular. Many family members are involved in the company’s activities, and the younger members are now inheriting the patrimony of their predecessors.
In 1517, King Henry VIII became one of its customers. The family archives still preserve some parchments containing wine orders from the English monarch.
Archival documents attest to large shipments of wine that went to the popes as well, and to celebrated artists: Donatello and his workshop, and Michelozzo Michelozzi.