Other ways to wine
Slow down enough to really see
Curated journeys through Italy, designed with curiosity and care.
Wine as a living system
Agriculture, chemistry, history and human choice — a wine often reads a place.
Food as culture
Pleasure, beauty, health and justice — real food lives off the obvious path.
Movement as understanding
Walking and cycling let a place reveal itself — mind and appetite awake.
An approach to travel
Wine, food and movement as ways of understanding
Manifesto
We are custodians.
Every journey creates an ecosystem: people, places, knowledge, traces that remain. Yet the speed of modern travel has made many encounters superficial — places consumed, flavours forgotten, stories barely touched.
Grape Stories was born from a simple idea: to slow down enough to really see. To linger. To taste. To listen.
I design and guide signature journeys where wine becomes a key to understanding territories, food becomes knowledge, and conviviality — the ancient art of cum vivere, living together — remains at the heart of the experience.
True knowledge grows from curiosity and a sense of beauty. From knowledge comes care.
Signature experiences
From a vermouth in Torino to a journey across the vines
The Vermouth Experience
Belle Époque aperitivo, blind tastings and the very roots of the Italian aperitivo.
Hike & Wine
MGA cru walks through the vineyards, ending at a producer's table.
Smell Camp
Reading wine and food through the science of smell — molecules, botanicals, essential oils.
Truffle & Table
Inside the International White Truffle Fair, where chefs and producers meet.
Vertical Vineyards
Heroic terraces, sea paths and the food of the Ligurian coast.
Not packages — starting points. Each experience is curated case by case; the real journey begins when we write the next one together.
What I do
Each project is tailored
no catalogues, no fixed formats
Signature guide & tour director
On-field guidance and narrative depth for curated journeys across Italy.
Personal travel advisor & curator
Experiences designed around people, season and context — built through conversation.
Private sommelier & wine educator
Guided tastings, cellar conversations and advanced, contextual wine education.
Territories
Wine regions explored through people and landscapes
Piemonte
Layered wines, rigorous food culture, discreet elegance.
Liguria
A vertical landscape, read physically — terraces, sea paths and heroic vineyards.
I also design project-based journeys in Tuscany, Etna, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and the Amalfi Coast — always through the same lens: wine as a key to understanding place. See all destinations →
About
Martina Doglio Cotto
I design journeys the same way I choose a restaurant: by asking questions, listening carefully, and trusting a well-trained instinct.
I am a biologist by training, a sommelier and wine educator by profession, and a travel advisor by vocation. People say I have a sixth sense for finding real food. I call it research, curiosity and a refusal to settle for the obvious.
Wine and food are never just pleasures to me — they are culture, health, responsibility and identity. My work often feels like a small investigation: meeting the farmers, artisans, agronomists and cooks who quietly make Italy what it is.
Outdoor is my religion — hiking, cycling, running. The latest endeavour: Paris to London on a gravel bicycle, always looking for new ways (and roads) to wine and conviviality.
For whom
Grape Stories is for people who choose depth over display
For travellers who
- Love wine and food — but also walking, cycling and the open air.
- Value knowledge as much as pleasure.
- Are curious, and never in a hurry.
- Prefer depth over display, and meaning over noise.
For professionals & partners who
- Work with demanding, well-informed clients.
- Seek credibility, storytelling and specialist insight.
- Believe quality comes from people, not volume.
- Look for a specialist partner, never a competitor.