Pescara vini

One can resist the temptation to embark on new paths but not the fascination of embarking on new adventures. I spent my long, hot autumn of 2019 under the banner of this motto, between dreams, desires, results and sudden pauses for reflection.

Like every year, the harvest for me is a whirlwind of emotions, emotional as well as physical stress, but still the most satisfying time of year, where every expectation comes true and this time I had many perspectives. I could not imagine a scenario adverse to my plans.

The days at the end of October are the most beautiful of the year, a pleasant warm sun accompanies you in the central hours of the day and gives you calm and tranquility making you forget the frenzy of the previous months. I usually greet autumn among the rows of my small vineyard in Pratola Peligna engulfed in a light and festive end-of-season atmosphere: a chat, a smile exchanged with Mara, her indisputable life partner, a joke made with Domenico, a tireless worker and then she my mother indomitable Professor, careful critical observer who has never lost the desire to pass on her immense knowledge!

It is now a ritual that I have been repeating for 15 years, as many as my vineyard has and, not surprisingly, it is from here that my oenological adventures began.

I remember that the work organization wasn’t the most rigorous, much less the work tools, but the right spirit was there and it was more than enough to get started. We prepared crates, scissors, a crusher with integrated electric motor, made from an old washing machine, the magical little press that was more beautiful to look at than easy to use and finally the historic and timeless “unusable” vats that I have now carried with me since the first winemaking ventures. Other than “vin de garage” I would rather say “vin de bonne humeur”!

The grapes, not too ripe, had a robust skin with a purplish color so thick that it crunched when pressed, giving off sour vegetable odors typical of young vine shoots. A youth that despite the maturity reached did not want to lose track. I could not overlook this detail so, as I poured crates of grapes into Domenico’s ingenious patented crusher, I was increasingly convinced of how I should transform those magnificent grapes into a goblet drunk with joy and summer scents.

Thus began another little adventure.

The wine obtained immediately showed its youthful, lively characteristics, as naive as those who want to amaze you at first sight without asking too many questions. The lightness of a beaujolais nouveaux fused with the indomitable restlessness of a Montepulciano. I was happy…Habemus vinum! What better memory of that wonderful year than to preserve unparalleled ethyl emotions!

So far everything has been magnificent, I greeted 2019 with many good wishes in the drawer, in particular for a series of personal goals that brought my mood to the stars, almost unbelievable.

My 2020 began, as usual, with a fantastic ski mountaineering outing, lost between steep snowy slopes and the deafening silence of the solitary peaks of Abruzzo. A magnificent horizon on the summit foreshadowed a year full of extraordinary events. The first two months of the year were intense with work, especially in Loreto Aprutino on the Ciavolich farm where, for almost ten years, I have been working as an oenologist and, with great pleasure and devotion, I dedicate body and soul to the success of authentic, unique wines. Nothing and no one could imagine that the beginning of this exciting journey could end abruptly. Unfortunately it was like this, the terrible pandemic that we were already talking about at the beginning of the year arrived and all the projects, expectations and our habits underwent a sudden change without ifs and buts.

They spent months of uncertainty, resilience and an unusual loneliness lived, fortunately, working hard all day, trying to give their contribution to those who decided to resist the severe blows that the pandemic was inflicting on the sector’s economy. There was no other alternative, either you tried to ride the wave or you were overwhelmed by it.

Two months of lock down seemed interminable, among other things accompanied by a very atypical dry winter, but with the arrival of the first warm days of late spring, the pandemic seemed to be behind us and an incurable optimism took root in my soul, above all motivated by the fact that I had just become a dad!

Summer seemed to fly and between vineyards, wines, baby and diapers I managed to get by in organizing the work in the vineyard and in the cellar. Spring was not very clement, indeed rather rainy, but July and August reserved for us the classic long-awaited sunshine for lovers of seas and mountains, a little less for the poor thirsty vines now with few water reserves available. Day after day, without realizing it, I arrived at mid-August, just before the arrival of a new harvest that looked very strange, wrapped in a truly surreal atmosphere. It was necessary to gather all my strength but before starting another tour de force I decided to do one thing: keep a few bottles of that “artisanal wine” that made me end 2019 with a pleasant memory now distant.

Obviously my formidable squadron could not be missing: the patient Mara, the workaholic Domenico and the timeless Professor. Armed with courage and good will, we organized a bottling chain that would be the envy of the most extreme vignerons naturels: milking machine-style manual filler, “elbow grease” capper and, dulcis in fundo, a patented “human palm” manual labeler all accompanied by a steel saucepan snatched from my kitchen for the final shellac seal. What can I say, what more could you want? All this made his eyes shine as only one’s own creature can do.

Well! At this point I was very ready to face a new battle: the 2020 harvest. How can we forget such a singular harvest, warm both in the temperature and in the spirits of the people involved, but at the same time calm, thanks to the weather which remained clement until the last few days collection. It may be that in Loreto Aprutino the climate is hardly adverse to winemakers, but usually during the grape harvest, like every self-respecting autumn, the rains condition the times and anxieties of the workers and with them the cursed mold on the grapes! But this year, albeit fatal, the harvest went on with incredible regularity and if the white grapes were perfect in their characteristics, the Montepulciano grapes, which were too ripe, were nothing short of exceptional. How can we forget a harvest like this!

Although probably everyone of us would like to leave behind a vintage full of difficult events whose presence we still perceive, I don’t want to forget it and I will keep a memory of this strange period in my own way as I always do, through a wine, to capture a moment, an idea, the memory of a difficult period to relive again to see what can come out of it. After all, there is still a long way to go, many wishes to be transmitted through the “divine nectar” which along the way, full of stray mines, can collide and give life to new scenarios, new adventures, new balances. A bit like in the beautiful film by Ferzan Ozpetek “loose cannons” in which the peaceful and depicting figure of the grandmother, the nerve center of the balance of the family, including the bad mood and the contradictions that now hovered in her house, she who for years had hidden her disappointment with painful and understanding wisdom, she proposed with extreme determination to commit suicide as a message of a profound act of love towards her loved ones such as to break any apparent balance, because as she stated: “stray mines they are used to bring disorder, to take things and put them in places where nobody wanted to put them, to mess everything up, to change plans”.

Goodbye 2020!