In a few days a new love story, as I call it, will start. Because you have to
be really fond of this job to face all the challenges and problems that may
suddenly arise.
Only a winegrower or a farmer is aware of working for a whole year and
have all the production destroyed by a hailstorm. But there is more than
this. I can see many entrepreneurs today boarding like pirates. People
coming from different trades, with a lot of money for whom wine is only a
business. Companies born with the main aim of becoming leaders in this
business, filling the market with low cost wines – often unsold – and then
they disappear, because there was no love story behind.
I’ll tell you my point of view. My love story is awaking every morning at 5
o’clock, starting the day among vineyards and cellars, restaurants and
customers who come looking for you in the factory and they want to know
your story. Stories that are not always a bed of roses, but that go ahead
thanks to diligence and passion. Bank account always in the red but never
underselling the product. Because behind every bottle of wine there is
effort, sweat, tears and joy, the hard work of so many people. And I still
cannot realize how many wineries can sell their wines at less than 2€ per
bottle. Maybe to them the cost of grapes is 0, just like the cost of
winegrowers is 0, and I say “lucky them”. It is interesting like a guide
book, or a “wine expert”, can judge freely without thinking of the
consequences or what is there behind that bottle. But this is the wine world
and, for better and for worse, we are part of it.
The organic wine starts with an organic agriculture
This year my father and I have taken a big decision that will completely
change the way we work and we think. We have converted to the organic
agriculture so that our factory from now on will produce organic wine. It
is easy to say but it is not easy at all to do it, for us, at least. We could have
done like so many others that make “biological wine on paper only”,
products always perfect. But our ethics forbid us to make fun of our
customers. We make what we say and we say what we make. So this year
we will approximately lose about 30% of our production, because
converting from a traditional agriculture to another one to produce organic
wine is no picnic at all. It is impressive how much the pathogens can resist
when they get used to exclusively chemical treatments. Therefore it is
normal that sulfur and copper (the only products allowed in biological
agriculture) just tickle downy mildew and powdery mildew. We managed
not to treat moth thanks to mating disruption and control traps, in this way
saving money and, above all, saving the health and environment. The thing
is, whoever makes a serious organic agriculture has only one target in
mind: to save the environment and the territory where he works (which is
not ours, as many people think) in order to leave to the future generations
the same ecosystem as we found it, if not better. As I said, 30% lower
production, but no chemical products, no herbicides. To those who
consider it a loss, it is an achievement to us. We have learned it’s not
impossible, just a little diligence, as usual. But do you want to put the
healthiness of grapes and wines that will derive? Well, the love story this
year starts like this, with a big change, a nice view and a great goal. We
just have to wait the perfect moment for our grape harvest and see how it
goes.