Italiano
The new wine producers
Having a successful job, deciding to change life and produce wine. A fate common to many producers who have created successful businesses. We point out three in northern, central, and southern Italy.
The wine world is full of winemakers and producers in general who come from other fields and who through winemaking have literally changed their lives. Some started several decades ago, and today distinguishing them from those who instead have a family tradition of several generations and sometimes centuries can be difficult. However, the story of those who started with a real life renewal is often really interesting. Telling three stories of new winemakers, or at any rate those who had no previous history among vines and barrels, seemed like a good idea.
The first is that of Marco Piacentino, who some 20 years ago decided to combine his work as a successful architect with that of a wine producer. He did so by purchasing a few hectares of vineyards in none other than Piedmont, in Barbaresco, in the prestigious Roncaglie area. This is how the Socré winery was born, and this is how his Barbaresco Roncaglie was born, a red made from Nebbiolo grapes, of course, aged in 20-hectoliter barrels and made with partly innovative winemaking techniques, using 20-hectoliter wooden vats for fermentation and small French oak barrels for subsequent aging. Elegant, austere, long-lived, from the "neophyte" that he was, he managed to produce a true gem, among the best wines of his type.
Erik Banti's story, on the other hand, is even older because it begins in the world of wine in 1981, when he, a brilliant young tour operator from Rome, decides to move to Maremma and start making wine in the Morellino area, with Sangiovese from those parts, first in Montemerano, then in Scansano. As a true "citizen" he goes to live in the countryside, changes his life completely, and becomes one of the best producers in that area. Today many consider him the "father" of Morellino, the one who managed to make it known halfway around the world and one of the happiest and most classic interpreters. Certainly for that wine there is a before and an after Erik Banti, and few when he began would have imagined that things would turn out that way.
We move south, to Santo Stefano Briga, between Messina and Taormina, then to Sicily, to the hills before the Peloritani Mountains and overlooking the Strait. Salvatore "Turi" Geraci was and is an architect and a gourmet. Since the early 1990s he has become one of the icons of Sicilian winemaking. He revived the family business that was half-abandoned and began producing a legendary wine, Faro Palari, from Nerello Mascalese grapes with additions of Nerello Cappuccio and Nocera. It is an enveloping, spicy and utterly Mediterranean red that today passes for one of the best and longest-lived Sicilian wines in an absolute sense. He continues to be an architect, he is a great lover of gastronomy, but in the wine world he is best known for that extraordinary wine that literally changed his life.
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