Vinifying according to nature

Among the thick walls of Villa Favorita you didn’t feel the usual heat of fairs: that temperature resulting from the tasted wine and the uproar of voices, which weakens the body and reduces the enthusiasm. What you could clearly perceive, on the contrary, were the scents of curiosity and good humour. The many rooms on the ground floor and the basement, together with the position of the different tables, which frankly speaking we didn’t understand, disoriented us a little but, comforted by the available good telephone and internet-mobile connection, we didn’t indulge in complaints. And like ants looking for food, we moved in group, bouncing here and there, driven by the pheromones of natural wine.

VinNatur, the association organising this Festival which puts together 138 producers with a strong self-control, is demonstrating they’re capable of moving the attention towards a way of making wine of which, over the past 30 years, we pretentiously didn’t want to hear (or which didn’t want to see). In the past, the end of the bottle was given to the most important guest, because it was the liveliest part. Today, instead, seeing the solid remainders in a bottle, everybody prefers to change to a new one. In fact, these remainders are the first evidence of a natural vine-dresser, for whom often the defects of a wine represent its value.

How about a murky colour, or the clear scent of just one fruit, two at the most, instead of a tropical bouquet? How about waiting for a wine, once it has been poured in a glass? How about surprising and unsettling scents, when you’ve just opened the bottle? True wine, that in which nature takes its time and the hand of man accompanies it and watches over it like a friend, certainly needs more attention and more efforts. When tasting De Bartoli’s wines, such as the dry Zibibbo Integer or Cos’ white wines, or Masseria Starnali’s falanghina, with an acidity that deserves an ovation, or even a Spergola – a local grape variety from Emilia – in the Metodo Classico Cà de Noci version, or the Cruasè Pas Dosé by Bacco dei Quaroni you enjoy the result of a work done with awareness, passion, and almost immune to greed, just like the robust vineyards of these vine-dressers are immune to powdery mildew and plasmopara viticola.

Participating in a special afternoon tasting of 9 wines produced on volcanic soils was the occasion to better understand the roots and the leaves of this new approach to wine. Directed by Andrea Ugolotti, a famous sommelier working in various starred restaurants and now a consultant in Montalcino, the tasting enjoyed a magmatic moment that finely demonstrates how the market of natural wine and that of conventional wines are still on two parallel, if not divergent, tracks.

Our question to Ugolotti on which role could the oenologist have in the case of natural vine-dresser received a perhaps too natural answer: “Oenologists ruin the ecosystem”. This was readily softened by Angiolino Maule, Vinnatur’s president, who was also participating. “Oenologists should become those who have a stronger confrontation with those who want to produce a real wine, and even with nature”. It needs to be said that we’ve had enough with the era of deus ex machina oenologists and of standardised wines. On the other extreme, saying that wherever nature takes us is a good destination, could only turn into another trend, to be included in the more vast one of downshifting, but, nevertheless, destined to be overcome by something else. History is made by people and by wine too. This is what we’ve experienced at Villa Favorita, and this, to us, is something with a very strong ageing potential.