10/12/2002

Italy's "Wine For Life" Targets African Aids

ROME, DEC 10 (REUTERS) - This holiday season, if you want to raise a glass of prohibitively expensive wine and share your good fortune with the world's poor, you need look no further.

In a novel way to take from the rich and give to the poor, Italy's Sant' Egidio religious group and some of the country's top wine producers have come up with a scheme to help Mozambique tackle one of Africa's worst problems of AIDS.

The Rome-based Catholic group, which brokered the peace treaty that ended the civil war in Mozambique 10 years ago, has convinced producers of fine wines to place a small stamp on some of their most prized -- and expensive -- vintages.

When consumers buy a bottle, all of which cost more than the minimum monthly wage in Mozambique, they know that 50 euro cents will go directly to help AIDS victims there.

The list of vinters participating in the project, called "Wine for Life," reads like a sommelier's dream.

They include Sandrone, Fattoria dei Barbi, Lungarotti, Caprai and Ruffino.

"It's a very simple idea," said Mario Marazziti, a founding member of the Catholic peace group that has been mentioned often as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

"The producers can buy as many of the little red and white stamps as they like -- 50, 1,000, 10,000. The important thing is that everyone knows the money goes direct to Africa," he said.

Some of the wines, such as Barolo Sandrone, can cost as much as �200 in the United States.

The some 25 top producers who presented the project in Rome recently said they would not raise the price of their wines but absorb the cost of the contribution.

"This 50 cents is not going to break anyone's back, either the consumer or the producer," said Daniele Cernilli, wine expert for Gambero Rosso-Slow Food, one of Italy's leading food magazines.

Cernilli, one of the promoters, said he was not religious but saw the project as a way of sharing one's good fortune.

The minimum industrial wage in Mozambique is about �29 a month while the minimum agricultural wage is �19.50.

About 13 percent of adults in Mozambique are HIV positive and some 420,000 children are orphans of parents who died of AIDS, according to United Nations statistics.

Philip Pullella