Our #VinodiVigna with the collaboration of V.I.V.A. Project of the Italian Ministry of the Environment

My job here at the farm is to “make the cards run”, I fill in the product presentation cards, I follow the relationship with the influencers with whom we collaborate, I take care of the updating of our site, I follow the administrative part; things like that, necessary to manage a family business but not essential to determine the quality of a product such as wine, so don’t feel like it if this article will seem light to you, it is the spirit with which I decided to write it.

We come to us … more than once I found myself thinking, while I was compiling one of those pre-printed models that are used to present the wines, that the only name of which an indication was requested was that of the cellarman; the cellarman and not the winemaker is the person who represents the style of the wines of a cellar and, necessarily, the perception of the quality of the product of a wine company.

And more than once I asked myself why agriculture is never talked about, except in specifically technical contexts.  Because poetry is born only when the grapes enter the cellar and it is from this moment on that games are played, as if everything that has been done before is not relevant.

In my opinion there is an underlying thought in which agriculture is in a position of submission compared to other sectors of the economy: it is as if the farmer is a  person committed to doing only manual work and not correcting his obligation to update himself, to know protocols of good practices, to understand and interpret the relationship between an atmospheric occurrence and a biological response of plants, or as if leading a vineyard is a simple thing, within the reach of people of good will.

We don’t think so.

We think of the vine as a person (our person).

As a living thing, the vine becomes less ill if it is in the condition to receive a lot of oxygen, or if the wind that dries it is channeled into the gully where it lives, or if you have been timely in carrying out the field work.

Our task is to observe and do.
We take into account the weather conditions and the data from our weather station and decide (or rather maximum decides) what to do.

We do not go to schedule, with massive dosages of pesticides, but every time there is a need, with light quantities and in prevention.

Then we report it.

We do this together with soil and health for organic certification and together with experts from the Ministry of the Environment and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart for VIVA sustainability certification.

It is a meticulous work, of continuous control and comparison, the result of which is enhanced by the suggestions of our winemaker Marco Fioretti and our agronomist Stefano Mascioni, both fully involved, like all of us, in this continuous work of improvement.

What we do within the VIVA Program is really important: we have a quantitative and measurable feedback on all the work and our company.  It is not the specific piece but the whole set of things that are done.

This goes beyond personal thinking about how to lead a vineyard or how to make wine, this means reasoning about all things, because it is all things that make you what makes the difference.

And this is the underlying reason that prompted us to enter this voluntary certification process.
Not the advantage of a value recognized by law (even if our grapes are certified as organic), or the faith in the principles of biodynamics (which we know and make our own: maintaining the fertility of the land,  make plants healthy so that they can resist diseases and pests; produce foods of the highest possible quality but respecting Nature), but the confidence in a range of values, numerical expression of a set of good practices evaluated according to protocols and standards recognized at international level.

Our certification process was not a quick one. It was necessary to do the VIVA training (four amazing days at the Sallier de La Tour-Tasca d’Almerita estate) then organize the data to get to the indicators, then compare with all the referents to clarify what was written or correct when required … really much work.

But in the end we succeeded, we were aware of our sustainability performance. I still keep the memory of those days, we went to check the result obtained by the companies already certified, we compared it with ours and I said to myself: “well, however, we’re not too bad” . I had the feeling of no longer representing a very small winery to which the experience of the people who lead it and a good reputation on the local market do honor, that score represented in my personal perception of the moment all that we were, our history, the care and the dedication that we put into our work, our know-how and this set of things had translated into a set of numbers, of measurable quantities and proportionate to the single bottle of wine, set of numbers that allowed us to compare with those  (transparent and available on the portal of the Ministry) of the best Italian wineries, as equals, within a path that sees technology, science and personal culture, the only distinctive elements that bring a comparison.

This is why #ilvinodivigna is the title of this article and is one of the hashtags that represent our product.
Not organic wine, or biodynamic wine, or natural wine but vineyard wine, sustainable wine in which you explain what you do, report, measure yourself against the best.