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By Andrew Catchpole
Published: 11 December, 2025
The status, announced on Wednesday (10 December), has previously been awarded to the likes of Neapolitan pizza and opera singing, but marks the first time a country has been recognised for its cuisine in its entirety.
As such, Italian cuisine, and the wine embedded within that culture, is now considered a ‘living heritage’ by UNESCO.
While the main focus of this new listing is clearly food-based, it does more broadly help with recognition of wine’s cultural importance within gastronomy.
Previous listings have tended to focus on specific practices such as the traditional qvevri winemaking methods of Georgia, or Italy’s own head-trained bush vines of Pantelleria and the landscape itself of the hilly Prosecco vineyard heartlands.
The new elevation follows a successful application by the Italian government to have Italian cuisine recognised as an Intangible Cultural Heritage, and now means that various UNESCO safeguarding, good practice and support initiatives will look to embed and preserve Italian gastronomic traditions for future generations.
While no-one in the trade is expecting a notable uplift of Italian wine sales, it is certain that a fair few glasses of vino will have been raised across Italy at the news and such recognition can only boost respect for Italy’s already popular gastronomic status.
Picture credit: Pixabey
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