Ep. 1713 Anna Obukhovskaya Interviews Jacopo Maniaci | Clubhouse Ambassadors’ Corner

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My name is Stevie Kim, and welcome to Italian Wine Club on Clubhouse. Today's Thanksgiving Day. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. And we are still, trying to come off our comatose state of the Thanksgiving party at the office. So Hey. Hey, Stevie. Long time no see. Long time no see. Yeah. Exactly. I we were just with Anna at the, Gita Scholastica. We were doing some very serious deep dive. I think we've tasted about 120 wines of Verdecchio, the Castelli Diezi, Verdecchio, the Metallica, La Crema, the Moradalba, and then Rosso Conero, about 120 wines. We've seen 60 producers. It was very, very intense in four days. So I just saw an, just few days ago, actually. And today is the Ambassador's Corner Thanksgiving edition, and it's a fireside chat with Manyacci. Anna, tell us a little bit about why you've chosen Jacopo as your favorite producer today. Yeah. As you as you mentioned, I was in I was in, actually, I wanna I was at Gister Scholastica at, Aetna. Uh-huh. For Stormina Gourmet. Yes. Okay. Great. So and then press tour, to the wineries of, Aetna. And, one of the producers we visited was Tinuta de Festina, which was absolutely fascinating. And, you know, one of my biggest impressions of Etna tour was Etna Bianco. I didn't ever expect Etna Bianco wines to be of such a high quality. We tasted a number of, wines of different producers from, from smaller to bigger, from pioneer, like, from pioneer, like SalvoForti to new wave producers. So it was really fascinating, and I thought it would be great to invite, Jacopo for ambassador's corner and discuss a bit about, beautiful wines, about Kariqante grape, about the reed the area, just basically about everything. Yeah. And we've just come from the trip from Marque where where we saw the ageability of these lovely white wines of, I mean, above all, I suppose, verdicchio. So it will be very interesting to understand the ageability of Caricante as well. Yeah. I totally agree. And, plus, in in addition, to everything, Jacopo is a great speaker. He's, really great at telling wine stories. So it should be a very joyful interview. Yeah. So what are the learning objectives that we should expect, from this call today? Well, honestly, I just wanted, you guys to hear Yakov's stories Mhmm. Because it was such a such a pleasure, so that he shares them with all of you also. But, we cannot miss, the topic of, factors of quality of Edna Bianco. This I would like to to discuss as well, and also perspective on markets outside of Italy. Okay. Very good. I didn't introduce Anna because everybody knows Susanna by now on the Italian Wine Podcast. This is like your fourth or fourth interview maybe? I think it's six. I counted yesterday. Goodness. Anna. Wait a minute. Hold on one second. Congratulations. I think you've done more than any of the other ambassadors. My goodness. Congrats. And thank you so much for doing this. Very excited. Your interviews are always punctual, and we learn so many things from from the call. So, I'm going to just leave the floor to you, and, and I'll come back maybe towards the end of end of the call or maybe Lycan can, fill in. Because today's Thanksgiving, so I'm I'm I'll be on my way back home to do the Thanksgiving dinner as well at home, not just at the office. So okay. Alrighty. I'm over to you, Anna. TV. Have a great evening. And, well, I like to welcome, Jacobo to the to the interview, to this podcast to the to the clubhouse. So, just just a very short, brief, introduction. So because Jacobo is obviously a very young person, but, there is quite a large view. So I would like to shorten it, a bit and let, Jacopo tell mostly about himself. So he he's been working in the winery, Tinute de Festina, since 2014, and the project was actually born in 2007. It was found by Silvia Mastrelli, a Tuscan producer and pioneer on the volcano. So, we'll speak about it, a bit later. So, Jacopo, is actually from Sicily. So he graduated from, University of Messina in Sicily. He got a master's degree at University of Gastronomic Science in Polenso, Cuneo. And his family is in restaurant and breeding in the mountains of Nibrodji, but he lives in a winery since 2017, taking care of all the whole project. So, ciao, Jacopo. I'm very good. I'm very good. Thank you. So could you please, tell us as an introduction, what exactly, can you say just a few words about, your project, the Chinute De Ficina? Or what's what's the correct? Is it or? Who knows? See, today, a lot of people are saying, but, actually, the original name of the hamlet of of the estate historically talking is. So, personally, I say, but I don't really get offended if someone says fast enough. Okay. So could you please, tell us, a short story behind Tinuta de fast enough? How how it was possible to get, these vineyards, and what's, how it is working with this old vines for you? Absolutely. So you have to know that as you mentioned earlier on, the estate has been founded by Sylvia Maestrelian. She was a a Tuscan winemaker. She was already owning and making wine in Tuscany with the family company, which is called Villa Petriolo. And back around 02/1956, she actually met Salvo Forti that you mentioned, before, and, actually, Salvo was the person who showed Silvia the estate for the first time. And she fell in love with Mount Etna, and she decided to produce wines here. So she left Tuscany, and she moved here. Silvia, unfortunately, died a few years ago, but the legacy is still running on, with us today and and the family as well of Silvia. The the interesting part is that she bought the estate, which at the time was five hectares. Today, it's around 17, but the core that she bought was around five, and today, it's it's increased a little bit. It's around nine, and it's located on the Northern Side Of Mount Etna, on the Northern Slope, which is mainly recognized for Nerello Mascalese production. Unfortunately, she bought the estate, and this this was almost a nightmare for us because she bought it from 12 different owners, and they were all Sicilians, old relatives, and all quite old. So as you can imagine, we had such funny days at the lawyer office making the deal. We lost more than a year dealing with them, trying to convince them. And, finally, on the in the beginning, the actually, the 10/07/2007, she bought the estate. Right after the purchase, the most difficult thing for all of us was to understand which was the composition in the vineyard because she bought such an old, fragmentedlet me allow the word messy vineyard because all that 12 different owners just planted and propagated and grafted and replanted vines for a hundred or two hundred years without any or very few registered documents. In fact, the only document that I own still today, it's it's split it up in two small parcels. One, it's, certified 1932, and the other one is certified 1920, which means that the average age in the field, it's all bush wines, so Albirelli. It it should be around 90 plus years old, which is not really true. Even in the be