Happy Birthday Perlage Suite!

It is 11.29 p.m. on 16 March 2016 and a short break from work is obligatory to tell you how it came about Perlage Suite Wine Blog... since today is its first birthday! I am a little bit excited because this wine blog represents for me the materialisation of my personal and professional dream... and I love my work so much that every second I spend away from my MacBook feels like a wasted second that I could have used to create something great.

"The river always wins over the rock not because of its strength, but because of its perseverance". Buddha

Birth of the idea of sharing my notes on the web

Perlage Suite wine blog satisfies me like few things I think could satisfy a person, which is why on this special evening I want to briefly tell you its story. It was 8 November 2014 and Fabrizio and I were at a Master's course organised by the Registro Italiano at the CNR in Bologna in CSS3 and Html5, the languages with which most websites are built. After just two hours of the course, we looked like Sandra and Raimondo Vianello in the famous scene 'che bia che barba' ('what a bore'): while our fellow students listened avidly, we felt like we were wasting our time. So I asked Fabrizio to register the web domain cavatappi.org for me and set about developing the first prototype of what, on 16 March four months later, would become Perlage Suite. The first version was nice, but nothing like today's, perfected over a year of monitoring statistics to optimise content and layout for you who read me (by the way, thank you!). Corkscrew.org was born during the 2 days of the master's course on Friday and Saturday as an online notebook that I used to study at the course to become an AIS Sommelier since I was attending the third level at that time.

Perlage Suite Wine Blog: how did the name come about?

It was 8 March 2015 and Federico and I were walking as we do every morning in the park of Ravenna's public gardens and, in front of the Loggetta Lombardesca, I said to him: 'What if it was called Perlage Suite? The problem with the name was obvious: Corkscrew was too generic and could not be considered a brand, it was not a registrable trademark and the .com domain was already occupied. After all, at that time, I was getting passionate about bubbles for the first time thanks to the legendary Arcano - Franciacorta Riserva 11 years on the lees - and I wanted a name that would be able to recall them. I combined this with the word Suite, partly because we are used to hearing it in everyday language, associating it with a luxury room, but above all because Suite, in computer science, identifies a coordinated set of application programmes intended to support the performance of activities in a particular field - in our case wine. In short, I wanted to create the Suite of wine, and in particular of bubbles!

On 16 March 2015, Perlage Suite was online! Being a web designer myself, creating a beautiful website was relatively easy, but I wanted to do more: I wanted to create the synthesis between a professional website and my personal diary. I wanted it to be engaging, but also let my love for my work shine through... Perlage Suite Wine Blog makes me feel like the Bridget Jones of wine! Besides, so many things have happened this year! The most beautiful? That I completed the first part of my studies and became an AIS sommelier... right here on my lake!

'Only one thing makes a dream impossible: the fear of failure'. Coelho

Ever since I was a child I have dreamed of living on a lake, and seeing Franciacorta, the land of great wines, overlooking Lake Iseo, I found it a sign of destinyI realised that it was there, and only there, that I could realise my dream of creating my own service suite for companies in the wine industry: it was absolutely the perfect place. This happened in a single night when, instead of despairing at not having the rented house in Via Cerchio in Ravenna that I cherished so much, I decided that it was also a sign to push me even closer to the materialisation of my childhood dreams. In a single night I scoured every corner of the web to see all the houses available in the area until I found my own, beautiful and wonderful house, which I love in a visceral way because I feel that here I can do wonderful things, I can overcome the anguish of the past and above all it was the scene of the birth of a new love.

I called Annalisa, the owner of the house, at 8 in the morning after a sleepless night, and luckily she agreed to meet me even though I had the small (but voracious) Paco. At that time, in fact, dogs were not allowed in our house (today, thanks to my fault, there are four...) and that is when my new adventure in the Bergamo area began... and Perlage Suite became a reality: I visited many wineries, I wrote many reports, I refined my knowledge of information technology, the web and wine to expand my services to wineries, and I did various jobs and odd jobs, but above all I developed two beautiful websites related to the world of wine: morenatrere.com and another which will be up and running within 15 days, up to today where I am starting to create from scratch the image of a new wine cellar in the Oltrepò Pavese region: company name, logo, labels, packaging, choice of bottles, catalogues, website and everything needed to emphasise the quality characteristics of their product. I love this project and I can't wait to show it to you 😉

In short, in the beautiful lake of my dreams, I have found love and work... and I hope in time to find some peace (and in fine weather to lose weight). 😆)

As this quote from Elbert Green Hubbard says, "It doesn't take a lot of strength to do things, but it does take a lot of strength to decide what to do."

Every day we are led by the System to live like automatons. Chasing your dreams, without being afraid of making mistakes, is the key to realising them.

I may have made eleven winning baskets at the buzzer, and another seventeen times with less than ten seconds to go, but in my career I have missed more than 9,000 shots. I have missed almost 300 games. 36 times my teammates relied on me for the decisive shot - and I missed it. I have failed many and many times in my life. And that's why in the end I won everything.

Michael Jordan

Whatever your dream is, you can do it. But you have to be the first to believe it. Dare to dream!

Just a year ago I read a small book by Coach Paolo Svegli, whom I had the pleasure of meeting personally, called 'Dare to Dream' (which you can buy on Amazon here in an enhanced edition) and I found it simple and sincere, suitable for anyone who wants to stop 'letting themselves live' but wants to start realising their dreams in a practical and effective way. With the premise, I hope Paolo will forgive me, that I have never believed in coaches or NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), this book is a must read even for sceptics like me! 😊

Best wishes Perlage Suite, to what you are today and especially to what you will be tomorrow... because I have wonderful projects in store for you.

Cheers 🥂

Chiara

P.S. I must also confess something else: Paolo Svegli's book was an initial incentive, but it is not only his merit that I dared to live my dream. I was talking to Fabrizio on the phone, in tears, as I was telling him that the house in Ravenna for which I had already signed the contract was no longer available (due to the complicated divorce between the owners), and he said to me: 'it's time for you to go and live on your dream lake, don't you think?' These words crept into me like woodworm and a week later I was in my lake house!

P.P.S. Thank you because every day, when you read me or leave a comment, you help make my dreams come true. Thank you for ❤️

All my notes on wine and food in one book.