Gianfranco and the secret of Sauvignon

I was 27 when I met Gianfranco Gallo in 1981 and he was 19. In other words, we were just kinds. And it was he who took me to meet Silvio Jermann, who I later discovered was a relative of his. At the time, Gianfranco was taking his first steps in the family business in Mariano del Friuli, a village in the area of the Isonzo River famous for being the home town of legendary Italian goalie Dino Zoff. The family’s business was the Stelio Gallo winery which at time could still produce wines under the family name. Thus this was before the international law suit filed by the giant American producer Gallo that forced them to change the name to Vie di Romans. But at the time their bottles of Malvasia, Tocai and Sauvignon still had their white labels with a black rooster on the side.
Gianfranco welcomed us enthusiastically at the winery and showed us the new press that had just arrived before giving us a tour of the vineyard. Even then he had the holy fire of a winemaker, a passion that allowed him to work without every looking at the clock and to seek to improve the quality of his wines by paying attention to even the seemingly insignificant details. The vineyard looked like a garden, with an unusual density for area, especially in regard to the Sauvignon. Gianfranco loved this variety from the start and quickly became an authority on it in Italy. The vineyard was on level ground but the soil was full of rocks.

Vie di Romans made its debut in the mid-1980s with a wine in a Burgundy-shaped bottle and named after the rocks. Piére, in fact, is the name for rock in Friuli dialect. It is a Mediterranean Sauvignon, not unusual considering the sea is only a few kilometers away in Monfalcone. And it is above all a wrapping Sauvignon, with exotic and varietal aromas none of which are exaggerated, while the mouthfeel is the result of a search for elegance and balance, as well as a capacity to age. All these are aspects of the productive philosophy Gianfanco has abided by. His winemaking methods and research are geared towards producing wines that are as territorial as possible and never strive to be anything more than what the harvest was able to produce.
When his 1988 vintage came out it was somewhat cloudy, something that today would not bother anyone, and despite the fact that it as an extraordinary wine it was severely criticized by the trade press and given a low rating. Gianfranco tried to explain that it was caused by the richness of the harvest and his very ‘natural’ winemaking methods. But this was not enough to justify the problem and he was very disappointed by the reaction.
From then on all his wines, not just the Sauvignon, have had no similaruch defects. Other wines followed, great whites made from Friulano and Pinot Bianco grapes together with the blends, Flors d’Uis and Dut’Un, as well as a Sauvignon aged in wood, which he named Vieris. And last but not least a delicious Pinot Grigio with a copper-pink color called Dessimis. Today Gianfranco is considered a master, the youngest of the masters of the vineyard who began a revolution in Friuli in the 1980s, and Piere Sauvignon is today universally recognized I the world as the Friuli Sauvignon. Not bad.

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