Design bubbles: wine enters the language of design
In Milan, a sparkling route not only to celebrate design week, but to experience installations that amplify and intensify the tasting.
For years thought of as a convivial gesture, as an accompaniment to the design kermesse - the glass in the hand as one passes through courtyards and showrooms - today wine enters the language of design, becoming a narrative device, a directing element, a sensitive material. In 2026, this transition is evident. And it has a precise trait: it is the great Champagne Houses that dictate the pace, occupying Milan with interventions that are not limited to tasting, but incorporate it into a broader narrative.
As always, Perrier-Jouët chooses flowers, the privileged language of the Maison that was born from the encounter between Pierre-Nicolas Perrier and Rose-Adélaïde Jouët, united not only by their passion for Champagne, but also by their love of the botanical world. Which is embodied in the white anemone designed in 1902 by Art Nouveau artist Émile Gallé, which still decorates the bottle of the Belle Époque cuvée today. For this edition, it does so at SIAM 1838 as part of Forum Florum: Herbarium of the Present, an installation by Marcin Rusak Studio that includes Plant Pulses, an immersive installation created in collaboration with Perrier-Jouët. An artistic experience to change perspective on the plant kingdom, allowing us to see and hear the invisible signals that plants emit. The project stems from scientific research conducted by the University of Krakow, which discovered how plants can produce ultrasonic signals, for example when they are subjected to water stress.
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Veuve Clicquot, following the concept of its iconic yellow, builds the Chasing the Sun installation at the Mediateca Santa Teresa. Signed by Yinka Ilori, it works on light and colour with an almost programmatic clarity, but it is in the next step that the project really comes to fruition. In the Clicquot Café, open for the entire week from 20 to 26 April, the Maison's cuvées enter the scene as a natural continuation of the experience. There is no break between seeing and drinking: the wine comes at the end of the journey, but it is part of it from the beginning, calibrating timing and perception, and the tasting does not interrupt the narrative, it clarifies it.
Collected, intense and very incisive is the presence of Ruinart. The Conversations with Nature project, developed with Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata, fits into the miart context, outside the more accessible Fuorisalone circuit, and chooses a completely different register. Inspired by visions of vineyards and cellars in Reims, the artist imagines light and unstable wooden structures that build a continuous dialogue with the environment and time, bringing to the fair an idea of fragility that is also a reflection on Champagne itself and the nature that gives it to us. Here, wine is not declared as an autonomous experience, but acts in a more subtle way: it becomes an implicit presence, consistent with a project that focuses on nature, transformation and duration. A work that is deeply aligned with the Maison's identity and that reverberates in the city. From 13 to 20 April, during Art Week, various gastronomic experiences can be booked in Milan's best restaurants, hotels and lounge bars such as Langosteria Bistrot, IYO Restaurant, Stilla at Four Seasons Hotel Milano and A'Riccione Terrazza12.
Back in Italia, Franciacorta moves into the Slowear showroom, also in the Brera area. Throughout the week, the Consortium is running a programme of tastings and in-depth discussions anchored to the oenological dimension. Verticals, stylistic readings, guided moments: little scenery, more content. In the meantime, the Porta Venezia Design District sees the birth of the first Food District, a widespread project involving restaurants and venues in the district, from Consorzio Stoppani to Eroica Caffè and sunset aperitifs at Terrazza Palestro, which includes food & wine in the design discourse and recognises the gastronomic dimension as a language, no longer as a service.
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