"Without winemakers, wine ceases to be an agricultural product." This phrase, uttered by FIVI President Rita Babini during the Independent Members' Meeting, sums up the spirit with which we at Donna Vittori Borgo Agricolo (www.donnavittori.com) joined the Italian Federation of Independent Winemakers.
And I still remember the trepidation with which my daughter applied for membership, immediately after building the cellar and making her first wine, and the pride with which she received the news of our acceptance of FIVI membership.
She carefully planned our winery's first public appearance at the market (which had just concluded in Bologna) and left at 3:00 a.m. to attend the Federation's meeting.
Among the winemakers, one feels at home; everyone fights the same daily battle against the monsters of bureaucracy, and each of us humbly contributes, step by step, to spreading the culture of wine and the beauty of the environment.
In our own small way, we have reclaimed a valley where, before the industrialization of the 1970s, everyone cultivated the slopes with Cesanese vines and people had resigned themselves to landscapes of nothing but hay bales.
Today, the vines have returned in a different way, with young people who have planted them and lovingly tend them while organizing tasting events and dances among the rows.
The wine crisis is a generational crisis, and rebirth can only come through small businesses that spread Italian culture and traditions first, and then the wine. I enjoyed the speech by Alessio Mammi, regional councilor for Agriculture, who spoke of the pride of small producers, guardians of the territory, who, with their (often heroic) work, have brought smaller areas back into the spotlight of tourists from around the world.
FIVI Bologna is a market, not a fair, and people come with trolleys to stock up on wines for the year and buy Christmas gifts for friends. It's a bit shocking to see the trolleys inside the pavilions of the Bologna Fair, which generally host professionals, but the spirit with which people come to visit you at the fair makes up for it all.
We also met a few restaurateurs or small importers looking for stories of winemakers and native wines to present to their customers.
And we have to admit, Cesanese is a real hit!
Our region isn't known for wine; until a few years ago, all the wine produced was sold in bulk to the various trattorias in Rome for tourists. Only less than twenty years ago, entrepreneurs tired of always having to drink wines from other regions approached the vineyards with a different spirit.
They hired oenologists, built welcoming cellars, and finally developed labels for wines that are aged and then bottled.
The king of Lazio's grape varieties, and the only red DOCG, is Cesanese, and we had people come to us simply wanting to taste this wine and learn more about its history.
The market numbers were impressive: over 28,000 people came to taste the 8,000 labels presented by approximately 1,000 independent producers.
We could say that our first outing was with the arrival of the 1,000 in Bologna!
A final thought on the value of independent winemakers comes from Paolo De Marchi, a winemaker in Piedmont and architect of the extraordinary story of Isole e Olena, awarded by FIVI: "If family businesses end, viticulture in Italy ends."
And I would add that if family businesses end, the culture of authentic local traditions ends. Julian Barnes said everything else better than I could in his novel "England, England." And the horrible reality of standardization risks surpassing his imagination.
Hi FIVI, we're proud to be part of the family. See you in May for Winemaker Month and next year at the Bologna market!
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