Beyond the wine, La Bulichella

The world of wine is truly a fascinating, one where you can meet fantastic people who are much more than the wine they produce. Their backgrounds, skills and the paths they have chosen are the stuff that novels are made of. The 30th anniversary of the La Bulichella estate allowed me to have a wonderful encounter, first with a very special man and then, the day after, with his family.
It took place in mid-September, when the cold and rain were really putting producers to the test, in Survereto, in the Val di Cornia. The town is synonymous with the Costa Toscana (Tuscan Coast), known for the boom in the 1980-90s of Bordeaux-style wines, an area some call Italy’s California or Bordeaux, but which for me is the Mediterranean’s international side.
La Bulichella’s history began with the dream of a young Japanese man who, in 1960, decided to travel the world by motorcycle. His name was Hideyuki Miyakawa and, after traveling through India and Pakistan, he arrived in Rome with a broken Laika camera he got in Pakistan. The Olympics were going on and he got a job as a correspondent for a Japanese newspaper thanks to his Laika, which miraculously began working again. In October of that same year his passion for cars took him to Turin for the International Auto Show where he had two encounters which changed his life: the first was professional, with Giorgetto Giugiaro; and the second personal, with Marisa Bressano who, not long after, would become his wife. Aside from all the other events in their lives and their personal successes, the Miyakawas have also found time to help underprivileged children around the word. This activity led to the creation of La Bulichella, a place where they and four other families came together to offer these children an opportunity to make a future for themselves. In 1997, the collaboration with the other families ended and the Miyakawas ended up being the sole owners of the estate where, already starting in 1984, they were using organic farming methods without boasting about it, preferring to work in silence and to focus on nature and their fellow man.
Bulichella wines have always been very solid and had a vision that was different from the others. In an area where blending was the winning ticket, they have always insisted on making single-grape varieties as their leading product. At the time they were bucking the trend but today their wines have made the estate one of the best in the area. While they have won many recognitions, the estate’s most representative wine is its IGT Rubino, an ‘entry level’ blend that has always been one of the best in its category, a pleasing wine with a nice personality but not a ‘top’ wine.
In our tastings we compared their wines from 2011 and 2012, focusing on those that had shown the greatest improvement in quality. The most convincing were Tuscanino, made from only Sangiovese grapes, and Coldipietrarosse, a 70-30% Cabernet Sauvignon-Cabernet Franc blend. New fermentation methods and new pre-fermentation practices have allowed these wines to make important progress in regard to quality. The vineyards the grapes used came from are those with the best positions, on a hill in front of the estate’s headquarters where the soil is loose, with little clay and abundant in lime. The Cabernet vines, in particular, are on a very thin soil rich in iron and manganese.
The best we tasted were a Tuscanio 2011 and a Coldipietrarosse 2011.

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