The new wine by Adriano Zago • Food and Wine Italia

The fact that the production of food and wine is among the greatest responsible for atmospheric pollution, the poor health of the land and many human pathologies is between everyone’s eyes. But there are those who try to argin their impact, while making excellent products. «Biodynamic viticulture is an agricultural method that allows you to fully express the quality and uniqueness of the most different world wine territories; Also because those who the work of the earth with passion and true knowledge, know that the concepts of biodiversity, health and balance of ecosystems must be preserved both outside the campo da gioco and within it “. By rigorously describing the basic characteristics, Adriano Zago once again reiterates the -superficial approach of this practice, highlighting how much his agricultural success lies right under the surface of the cultivated soils.

Who is Adriano Zago?

Venetian agronomist and winemaker trained between the universities of Padua and Montpellier, Zago has at least twenty years of international experience per consultancy, avviamento and business growth acceso his shoulders.

He is the founder of Cambium, a community of professionals who since 2016 has dispensed useful advice per the agricultural and wine -growing field, whose main centro remains biodynamics: among its most important customers, both as prestige and greatness, per fact, companies of the caliber of Avignonesi, Maniero per Rampolla, Foradori, Arianna Occhipinti, family Casadei, Emidio Pepe, Col D’Orcia, Borgoluce, can be counted. Ceretto, Planeta, Ampeleia and Salicutti. Campagna Mastrilli is his “vineyard-yellow”, a project that brings together all the experience gained during his profession. He moved about twenty years asticciola to Mount Rigogolo per the municipality of Impruneta (at the gates of Florence), for tuttavia love of the landscape, he strongly wanted to create his small great organism here, challenging the rules of intensive cultivation without rotation and unbridled productivity.

The Campagna Mastrilli project

“A system is alive and interconnected if vineyards, olive trees, vegetable gardens, orchards, woods and animals coexist per a dynamic and care -managed balance.” These are the stylistic figures that have guided Adriano Zago per the creation of a rather singular vineyard for concept and substance. Quanto a the heart of the vineyards of Campagna Mastrilli, per fact, the trees planted, (almonds, fish, plums, walnuts and apricots and above all mixed hedges) are not simple ornaments, but living and industrious appearances: each of them silently dialogue with the earth, influencing up to 70–80% of the plants that surround them. “The shadow extends and protects, mitigates, guards”, is keen to underline Zago continuing acceso the importance of complexity: “Biodiversity is not only a matter of beauty ora principle: it is a concrete strategy. It protects from climate change, attenuates the thirst for the earth, offers shelter to allied insects and nourishes the invisible vitality of the soil ». The message is quite clear, not to say crystalline: “Policulture is not mal del paese for the past, but momentum towards a more conscious and far -sighted agriculture”, as Steiner supported regarding the fragility of simplification, already warning per 1924 as a monoculture and absence of animals would have gone many problems per the future.

A strategic vision to make wine

For Zago, the journey to get from your thought to the production of wine per the bottle is long and complicated, but at the same time stimulating: «Making strategy means imagining and building the future of the company per the next twenty years. It means acting acceso the foundations: deciding what to cultivate, how to enhance the product, which markets serve and, above all, to define the identity that you want to take as a company “. Which, specifically translated to reach the final consumer, means involving other professionals such as the microbiologist for clarification concerning fermentations, the artist to create the label, the communication expert with whom to deal with the positioning of product and the sales expert to identify the most interesting markets. Also because, he continues, “per the world of wine, now, the charismatic figures capable of being guided are becoming increasingly rare. And at the same time, the boundaries of univocal management emerge, where the managerial soul seems to have lost the echo of vision “.

It is not difficult for him to explain where his commitment to biodynamics lies, since it is not organic agriculture, nor simply sustainable, but it is a structured method, with deep roots, around which close practices such as agroecology, permaculture, and agroforestation that do not represent the destination, are revolved, but they transform into excellent travel companions. «Quanto a the visuale of natural, artisan, biological wines, however, a shared methodological framework is still missing. Perhaps the only common trait is the desire to pausa the patterns, to seek singular expressions, as opposed to industrial approval. And this is an important sign. But there is also a vast intermediate, indefinite, neither artisan nor industrial settore, which sometimes rests me more. Because that’s where you risk losing identity and vision ».

Campagna Mastrilli 2024 per preview

The result of seven (dear number, not surprisingly, to biodynamics) traditional Tuscan varieties – Sangiovese, Canaiolo, cherry, coloring, mammol, Tuscan Trebbiano and Malvasia Toscana – Campagna Mastrilli 2024 is a wine characterized by an excellent olfactory complexity, as well as by balance and tasteful freshness.

Quanto a this first vintage it came out as a rosé, to an ultra-destined pressing, but every harvest will decide acceso the color and structure, as the result of a co-foundation of the varieties collected at the same time: “How to say, mine is a ‘traffic light’ vineyard that wants to read the trend of each single vintage”, explains Zago. His new wine – acceso whose label the representation created by the illustrator Francesca Ballarini highlights “a grape acid that flies to go elsewhere”, a metaphor for transformation – thus becomes a point of synthesis and transformation of the complexity of the vineyard, without the use of preservatives nor abstruse manipulations: a convivial wine that binds perfectly with the territory even acceso the plate, to the cheeses, to the vegetables, to the vegetables, dishes, white meats and above all to the recipes of the Tuscan tradition.