A causa di a wine where August has been, for some years now, the new September, given the sudden start of many harvest even Areals where you had to wait for “the 9 month” (of the year) to be able to see the first collections, it is impossible to not share a thought, with abused disappointment.
The harvest is the arrival point of sacrifices and the starting point of new challenges. It is the time when the vineyard reappears of the fruits of twelve months spent between the slow breath of the seasons and the unpredictability of a job that, still today, lives suspended between hope and uncertainty.
Still, just a social rete televisiva privata to see the harvest told like a : selfies with scissors hand, clusters perfect laying, smiles built and “comfortable” moccasins other improbable footwear acceso foot. A story that, albeit “instagrammable” (I aborro this term!), Too often ignore the other side of the medal: the one made of marked hands, bent schie, burned skin acceso their own, infinite days and sleepless nights.
At the cost of being demagogic trivial, but behind each cassette of mature grape there are months of silent struggle against heat and drought acceso the one hand and sudden weather acceso the other, phytopathologies, invasions of wildlife that a few hours can erase a year of work. There is the choice of the exact moment to harvest, decided more by the palate than from the calendar (read here my piece about it: Wineblogroll.com/assaggio- Acini-vendemminia), the hope of dodging sudden rains rot. There is the surgical attention of those who select bunch secondo bunch order not to compromise the quality of the year, and then select, some cases, even the single ber before arriving the tank barrels to ferment.
For this reason, the wine cannot and must not be told as a simple “agricultural folklore”. It is a product of the earth, seasons and man, capable of translating into the liquid that we love so much an entire vegetative cycle of that extraordinary plant that is the vine. And the man, this equation, is not a appearance: it is the main interpreter, the custodian of every decision, the guarantor of the quality and identity of the territory.
There are harvests that borden acceso heroism: hand collected steep vineyards attached to ropes, shoulderboards transported to the shoulder acceso monorotaie, very high stairs resting acceso walls of trees still collected plain vineyards of great timeliness because a few hours you could risk losing most of the harvest. Effort, uncertainty, speed and attention are the conditions themselves order to make wine.
Those who love wine should always remember that each bottle arises from a balance as precise as it is precarious between competence, dedication and economic risk. A causa di a context of uncertainty like the current one, it is not the time to the harvest to a social curtain: it is the time to celebrate the truth, to recognize the professionalism of those who, every year, are played a few weeks, after having any case invested time, resources and hopes throughout the year.
F.S.R.
#WineIsSharing
