ABOUT PARADISO DI FRASSINA
Paradiso di Frassina has been inhabited since at least 1,000 AD and is located 5 km (3 miles) north of Montalcino, at the foot of the Montosoli hill. This isolated yet pleasantly accessible spot offers splendid and unobstructed views across the rolling Tuscan hills, as far as the eye can see. A visit to Paradiso di Frassina demands that those who come here immerse themselves completely in a virtuous cycle of the life of the vine and wine itself, with educational wine tastings and wine cellar visits in a unique and exclusive musical atmosphere. In effect,
anyone who comes to Paradiso in person will find themselves pleasantly surrounded by Mozart’s musical harmonies diffused, as you will already have noted when visiting this website, by a remarkable number of loud-speakers.
However this musical vineyard is not some silly romantic dream, but part of a long-term scientific research to see how sound waves can beneficially affect the vineyard and its vines, a project supported by the Universities of both Florence and Pisa.
If you want to know more about the reason for our musical obsession, somewhat unusual admittedly for a vineyard producing wine and offering holiday agritourism guest accommodation, come and visit us in person, to experience the emotion of walking amongst il Paradiso’s musical vines….
It would take Giancarlo around two years to restore this old farmstead, whose origins date back to around 1,000AD but which had been abandoned over 50 years; but in the end his dream did become
true. In this fabulous place, overlooking a never-ending panorama of pristine, gently rolling hills, a crazy idea was born, that of playing music to the vines.The struggle to achieve this was both a joy and a challenge for Giancarlo, and is told in his book L’uomo che sussurra alle vigne [The Vine Whisperer], published in 2010 by Rizzoli. The book recounts the existential, emotional and scientific journey, from the moment Giancarlo had this flash of intuition to the time when he first treated the vineyard using music therapy. This work subsequently became the subject of a research project led by the Universities of Pisa and Florence.
The Vine Whisperer is not only an account of the music therapy experiments but is also the story of the joy and difficulty of living life in an unconventional way, far from the hurly burly of the big city.
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