Ep. 206 Monty Waldin interviews Maurizio Zanella (Ca' del Bosco) | Discover Italian Regions: Lombardy / Lombardia

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. This podcast is brought to you by Native Grape Odyssey. Native Grape Odyssey is an educational project financed by the European Union to promote European wine in Canada, Japan, and Russia. Enjoy. It's from Europe. Hello. This is the Italian wine podcast with me, Montewood. My guest today is Maurizio Zanella. Maurizio is the founder and president, CEO of Cardel Bosco. Welcome. Hi, Monte. What is what is Cardel Bosco? What does that actually mean, first of all, and where is it? Yeah. Cardel Bosco, the meaning is a car is a dialect for Casa. In Italian is derbosco is in the forest. So it was a small house in the middle of the forest. That is was when we start in sixty eight Catelbosco in the beginning. A small house in the middle of a forest. And which region of Italy are we talking about? We are talking about Franca Corta that, probably, most of the people doesn't know exactly where it's located, but we are in Lombardy between Como Lake and Garda Lake. Exactly south of a small lake called Isaiaho. Lake Isaiaho? Yeah. And is a beautiful area. So in nineteen sixty eight, it was this house in the woods. Yeah. Where their vineyards attached to it at that time. No. No, Vigna. There was other Vigna in French Chacorta, but not next to this south. This house was a dream of my parent to have a small farm. They was living in Milano, and they want to have a small farm close to the city at one hour. And do, you know, vegetable, good food, and so they are big, they have a cow, they have a milk, chicken, fruit tree grapes to do some wine, but very, very small quantities. So did you grow up there? Now, I was sandy exile in this farm in, seventy. Nineteen seventy. Because How old were you? Sorry. I was, fifteen. Fourteen, fifteen. Because it was six I am fifty six. So I was fourteen because, in those area, you probably remember there was the revolution of the student and it's supposed to be all communist, not Satung and this thing. So I trouble in Milano with school. I lost actually two years. So they sent me in exile in the farm in order to be more quiet. So you were you were a you were a rebel then. Were you? Yeah. Very. Really? So you worked So you bought into the student protests Yes. The sixty eight. So that was That was very young because the protest was done for the university guy. Yeah. Started in France, didn't they? Nineteen ninety starting Paris and then in Milano, but was done for people that was nineteen up, the people at university, and and it was thirteen. And, so you're a rebel so that was a difficult age for a boy as well as thirteen. Yes. So I was thinking that it was more fun to do the work against the police instead to go to school. So To be honest. Two year. Yeah. I lost two year. Did you get into real trouble then? Yes. Yes. Yes. You know, I mean, look at you now. Yeah. Well, I learned something. You know, might if my grandmother's already if I introduce you to my grandmother, she's always a very smart man. He's very, like, you know, very friendly. I am very friendly, but at the time I I have my experience with me. Yeah. But do you look do you look back on that before we go forward? Do you look back on that with regret or as a learning experience. Learning learning experience. I just lost two years of my life, but, was a great experience. Really great, not because it was fun, but because I learned to match. I learned a lot from my father. He was obviously, in trouble and, because of your behavior. Yeah. And, so when you understand, and you understand before any other people that I have a real interest that was wine, he have given me the freedom at fifty to do what what I have done. And so this was outstanding because I have a son now that he's not even thirty and I don't let him do nothing without asking me. What you do? Why you do this? Why you do that? And if I think that my father other was make me build the first seller without telling me nothing how tall, how big, how small, which color? So he let you have your own freedom? Yes. I I I built the first seller at sixteen years. So you let you make your own mistakes. Yes. So that you could learn from them. Yeah. And you do that, and you're happy that your son was a was a big school. Okay. So that's the Cardel Bosco. Yeah. So how did it become a little house in the woods, with a view vines and a few pigs into a really what is a globally recognized brand in in wine circles? What was the journey? The main reason objective is the timing. If I was starting tenure we was bankrupt because, no one was looking in Italy in those year of good wine, but I was looking for quantity wine. Chip wine. Yeah. And if I was starting ten years later, I was not number one, I was number a hundred and twenty two and was more difficult to stay on the first line. So the timing by chance have been something magic, not plan, a lot of luck to get the right timing to be probably one of the five ten twenty winery that they've changed the Italian the Italian winemaking and to be one of actor of what I call Italian Y renaissance was a big chance, but was not planned. It was all done by chance, and this was very, very, very lucky. The second thing is that the timing and the thing, the second thing was that I have no plan. I have a dream. There was not budget project, planification. I have only a dream. I want to do something great because my first seller that I visited when I was sixteen by chance was their T. Domangelo Romani County. And, it was incredible because after D' Garcia was in Champagne, when I come back from this trip, the light probably turned on. And, when I come back, I say, I won't do better we can do better in Italy. And so I start with this kind of proposal. For sparkling wine we're talking about, for high premium Yes. Sparkling wine. And so another the third lucky thing. So the first is timing. The second is dream, an ice dream. And the third is that I found, after my father, my real father that, was very a genius to let me give this freedom. I found a father with the culture and with love of this war that it was my teacher, my philosophy. It was Louis Yveronelli. That it took me, Hunter is, win because I was so young and he he looked a guy of seventeen years so passionate in wine and probably he was let's say, this is something crazy. So Louis Juveda Nelly, for those of you who don't know, is probably the most influential writer on Italian wine in the Italian language. And it me really. We have worked together, make ton of miles and car together, flight in all the work together to learn about wine, to build food, and, he was a big teacher. Teacher not how to make the wine, and the philosophy fee of, the extreme and the quality and the not lifestyle, style of life. Yeah. There's a difference, isn't there? A big difference. So you I mean, your family I mean, how did you meet Veranelli? Was that through your father? No. No. I was in a fair in general. It was a fair for hotel and restaurant called Bibbe. I believe it was seventy four, seventy five. The first wine that I was doing, I was in a fair and Bernalie came and say, well, do the way I say, I, and he say, you, you're too young. They say, no. It's me. Where are you? So he was he he was living in Bergamo that he's twenty miles from Karabozco. We was also lucky that we was very close. So he started a really strong friendship. And, this was my luck also to someone that gave me the, I used to say, the philosophic idea, not the technical. Yeah. The actual dream just to shape the dream. To shape the dream and and make the dream become reality with, pushing me and tell me this is wrong. This is good, but not to tell me how to do it. So what was the wine you actually tried? Was it a sparkling wine or a red wine? No. No. No. It was a steel wine because at the time it was pinot, different Chakorta. It was a steel wine because we start to do the sparkling in the seventy eight, and so it was before this. So it was a still a pinot noir? Was it pinot blanc? No, pinot blanc. And with the stamp chardonnay without to know, unfortunately, that there was Yeah. But a sparkling white or a still wine? Still. Okay. Was it still done with Pinobland that we suppose at the time to have only Pinobland, pinot gris, and pinot noir, and the pinot blowing in reality was a a blend of all vineyard because in the time, Italy, really, the knowledge of quality clone on vine was really low. And so there was no chardonnay, and the chardonnay was not existing. And they blend the chardonnay and pinot blanche and pinot Muscala if it was the same thing. So I still have the vigna. I don't want to take it out. The first Vigna to show what they sell me in seventy two, the Italian nursery. I don't make name, obviously, but that they say, this is Pinobranch and they give us four, five variety of blend without to know. They don't do because they want to do something bad, but there was no knowledge. They was only looking for the root stock that produced a lot. This was the only Yeah. That time was the only focus in the seventy was, high yield. High production. Yeah. So that start everything, and, this is how it started, Carlos. Okay. Well, the idea from that little wine fair where you got some encouragement to being part of a brand that is I said before is is basically globally known that what what happened to him in the middle well, tell us about the middle part of the story. He's he's a very long and, beautiful story. I have a lot of Oh, you're very you're obviously a very charismatic guy. And you're you're I don't know if I have charismatic, but Well, my in my view, you're a charismatic man. I I love what they do. Let's see. Okay. So you obviously got passion for what you do. You got technical background. You've had the right you've had the right influences in your that's Then I go to studying Bordeaux, then I go to study in burgundy, then I was so lucky to take from Champagne. One old man was it was lucky again. There was the name was Andre dubois, the translation of dubois, obviously is Del Bosco. So from the forest. So I have also the surname that was. Andres du Boa. Yeah. So andres du bois took in Italy the culture, the tradition that we missed in those times because, without them, my friend, you know, Italian winemaker, they are upset with me. At that time, there was no knowledge. In the seventy, there was only one probably that, you know, the name, start with tea that, was a winemaker making great wine, but the culture on quality wine. In Italy, the tea in Italy were in somewhere else, tele chef in California. Of them. Yeah. The california then became doing the wine from Casablosco before another brand from Tuscany, but he had worked on eighty eighty one, eighty two hundred Challengeative with us to make the our steel wine before he started. It's serious collaboration. He have done this friendly because we are he was friend, then he got a very good contract with the wine that now is no worldwide in Italy in Tuscany. But, this time, the knowledge was so all that I was obliged to take someone from France for the French Corta wine and someone from California for the steel wine because we miss the culture into great wine. So it was important, especially after I study in Dough University and in, called, inborn, I feel that in Italy we was sleeping or we was focused on another product. And so I ended stand that we have to change everything. So we change how to plant vine, and we go from one thousand five hundred food vine for Hector to ten thousand vine for Hector. So, hi, Dan, Steve. Yes. And we start all a process in order to try that the dream became reality. So those are the forty seven year that I am talking to you. Yeah. We can start it into you then. No. I'm joking. No. I mean, but if you want to see you want no. No. It's brilliant. It's an artist, but what what I miss the most is the tradition because all the other things you can buy or you can get the knowledge or you can have idea. We have five patent in Calabosco that no one in the world and have ever died. So you have a lot to do. So when if we pattern something means that we can pattern another hundred. So we are in the praise story still in quality wine, there is a lot to do. But, Pat, you're what are you painting? They're not very motivated. Paidens. I don't know. We paid to do the de gosman without oxygen. So we don't add one milligram of sulfide at de gosman. This is the more important pattern that we have. So you want to reduce the sulfide levels? Yes. And, a de gosman, you know that when you do this, got the wine, you feel the protection, the co2, because you lose the co2 oxygen and get in, and and you have oxidation. So you have to protect the wine with sulfide, and you, you give a big amount in this moment of sulfide. And it was crazy. I said, no, no, we have to find a way not to add any. And we get this and we pass on this. Then the new crazy thing is that when we turn all the vineyards in organic and we are certified organic with more than two hundred hectares, we find out that copper was not so healthy and was not so good for the fermentation because the yeast doesn't like him. I speak very simple in order that everyone can understand. And so we think something crazy because I think like my grandmother was always screaming with me when I was eating an apple, say washing. So we button the first very spa where we wash all the grape and we dry all the grape before pressing. And some people was laughing thing when we started this eleven years ago. And now, I mean, we see the result in the wine, where the wine are more clean and not jogging. They are more clean. They are more pure. They have more integrity. So there are a lot of think where we are working on and we are not finished, we believe because now the lack of Calabosco is that there is people working with me from more than thirty years that are more integralist of me. And so I have to keep them a little Calmy, you say, count. So you mean they want to be even sort of greener or No. Integlacing the quality. Integlacing the fact that dedication. So obsessive or obsessing. Obcessing on quality. Never happy. Like, you? Like me. So they want to be more than me. So I say, no, please. I am ready to match. On deduction? So please be be be a little bit less, but they are never happy. And so that everyone now that have a role in cattle Bosco in in the vehicle water in the winemaking in the safe, they're crazy on quality, and, they want never happy with what they do, and they want every day doing better. So I am lucky because now there is a great team and, without people you cannot do nothing the tree the dream will not be reality if there is no people like this. Yeah. I mean, that is very important that you gotta have staff that buy into a, that buy into your philosophy and b actually do what they're supposed to do. And also, as you say, have feel that they've got the freedom to hey, listen, why don't we try this? Maybe we should do it, change the subtle thing and do it another way. And that often isn't the case, when you see relationships between particularly like CEOs, the smart guy, and you don't even got a tie on, but you're a smart guy, obviously. And, just a normal vineyard worker, you know, say, hang we just I do the same operation four thousand times a year. If we changed it, we could save x number of hours and this much number of product. We'd save money and we could invest in something else. So you're open to that. Yeah. Always respecting the good tradition. But that comes from your, and it's a very, it can be very negative word, and it'll be a very proud. Even if sometimes I I have a tie, I say, don't be a mistake, even if I have a tie, I say, don't be a mistake, even if I have a tire in my farm. The main a globalist job of a farmer. Without farmers, we don't eat without them. We're not So I'm I'm very proud to be a farmer. When we say you are a manager, you are an industry, say, no, no, no, I am not an industry. I'm a farmer. So what's the next step for you? You must have ambitions. You're someone that's always gonna have other hurdle to to jump? We have not, like I told you in the beginning, we have not a target because, how how you can have a target. We don't know how to do to do better, but we have to do better. Now without to know how because the rules are done. For example, this is very interesting. It's a little more technical. In all the book of winemaking is kind of low that when you have the sediment of the wine that you cool down the juice, you have said the lease. The lease. And this on the book is right, you have to take out the lease heavy and leave the the light, the final lease. Otherwise, you get a stinky whine, you start getting reduction and hodge himself. And in Italian, lease back one, the heavy one is called fetcha. La fetcha. And fetcha, in Italian, you can say not only on the wine, but also in the population. This is the fetcha of the sausage. So, criminal or Yeah. It's a it's a bad term for lives. It's a very bad term fetcher, not only from the wine. It's scum. Also in the sausage. Yeah. You would call it scum, even though scum, it is anything that grows. I have the proudness to tell that now our fetcher is the best part of our wine because after that we wash the grapes that are not bad nose. There are not any more bad things, no copper, not zinc, no sulfites. So the feature, the Evilies, that one time it was takeaway because they smelled very bad. Now, they give to our wine a lot more power and we don't take away the feature anymore. We leave our wine totally. This is something that we discovered three years ago. We say, my wife, when we take away, like, because it was a rules and with men and say, but it's very good. Why don't we take it away? What is it? So we try to leave it. We try and we make comparison, wine with and wine without, and the wine with, they will always be this will say we are not stupid. We we leave it. But how much extra volume does that give? If you say you have a lead. It is about two and a half percent. Okay. That we was losing, but the wine is about less than one because then you put away the heavy. Mhmm. They're really heavy because he's solid. He's not wine. So we have a little one percent more of wine, of course. We'll make more more wine from the juice. But you'll say that your it's not just about the one percent extra wine. It's also about having because you leave on there, he's the wine absorb the power, the intensity from positive things and not from negative. And it can allow you to reduce level of sulfites as well because it's because it's still on the ears. So they tell you, we don't have a target because this happened by chance. We don't know when we studied the Burries Power of the machinery that was a crazy because the people that, you know, that all the fruit that became food is washed. Yeah. Olive to do olive oil, orange, to do oranges, apple to do cedar, or orange juice, fruit from yogurt, fruit from jam, everything is washed. The only fruit that is not washed is great because it's, is insane, is a blaspheme because the first frost in the sixty was to add water to the wine because who cares if the wine of thirty degrees is twelve or eleven and a half, who cares? And so the first fraud, the third bad thing to do was adding water to the wine. So when you speak water, in the world of good wine, high quality wine. The people, water, are you crazy? I think you're just putting the hose in the vat just to make a hole. And so when you we say we want the grape, the people look at me. Are you nuts? Yeah. I have Seth thought you were nuts. No. I we are a little bit nuts, but we dry the grapes ninety nine point seven percent. So there's is more wet grape that is cut under the rain that our our grade because our grade is more dry of someone that is harvesting with the But is it worth it in terms of cost? Obviously, traditional as it's sparkling wine? Great. Crazy cost to to wash and cook? But so you can you can back if you're making like a everyday white wine, you probably wouldn't do that. But if you're making top quality sparkling wine with the dish. No. We do now with all. We really do with the white. We do with the red because if you see, it's just enough that you look at the first we call yakuza in the first thing where go the grapes after half an hour, the color of the water, you understand immediately that is a process that will arrive for all the wine in the future because you see the water and you see the water brown and say, what is this? And there is the desert powder that came one of the sand. Yeah. It is the pollution, it's the cup, it's the zinc, it's a hand, it's a spider, it is everything you have in the grapes. But if you wash, you lose everything, and you have something more pure. So I believe it was something that will will not be a pattern for Colorado Bosco for a long time. What's your next project then? I don't know. We don't know. We we go day by day when we have we have evidence, we go for it. Do you think your father would be proud of you, the little rebel at fourteen who is not protesting or would he still think you're in? I don't know because he never loved this work because he said that there was invested too much money for what I get back So he he was more practical and you say industrial. I am more dreamer and farmer. And, I never met with him that he was more, let's say, rational. Yeah. More feet on the ground. Yes. But you have been very successful. What we are now very successful. And, and also is very, very, very important that I believe that you mentioned in the beginning in order to do this was not possible to do alone. And I to have a partner. So I I was not so egoist to say it's better to have something small at hundred percent. It's better to have something that can arrive where I want even if it's not all my property. And so that's also the choice in ninety four to have a partner that can allow me to make my dream become reality. So we can talk a little bit about the zone a quarter. So what is friendship going on? Yeah. And what? Because how you know, and I want to tell you, we are not talking today about, Spumante. We are not talking of champagne. We are not talking of sparkling wine. We are not talking of prosecco. We are taken French Cortezol. This is very important because, it's a message that I want to give to consumer because the consumer must understand that even the wine with the bubble, they are not different from the other one. But and so it's stupid to call it how they have done. You have to call it with the name where they come from. So we don't want and the law, the European law give us the opportunity to do because perhaps you know, all the sparkling wine done in Europe must mandatory put on the front label for help the consumer the fact that they have bubble inside. So all the sparkling done in Italy, they must have and the firm label. All the Spartan that in France, they have very much on the firm label. In Germany's sect in England, Spartan wine. There are two exceptions. One is our cousin of Northern France sister of Paris that obviously I don't mention. And the other is for Chorus. It began to see. And the other one is French Chorus. These two appellation get the recognition to be wine and not sparkling. So we are talking of wine. Incidentally, those wine have bubble, but incidentally. So I want, and I hope that the consumer recognize Francacorta immediately, like a wine like Barolo or like Nelo because the fact that it's red, Barolo, is not effective. The fact is that it stays six years in the hood, who cares. The fact in French Accord have the strongest low production sparkling wine in the world. Yeah. We don't care is French court, then the rules became after. If someone want to know, yes, is the most strict law to make a sparkling wine in the world, so low production of grain, low pressing of the grapes. More long aging time of all the other. So a lot of things that give the rules to the producer of the area to get not quality, my future, and build the culture that we meet because we have only fifty years of culture to give to everyone the direction to get the culture more fastest possible. Okay. I wanna say thank you to my guest today. Maurito Zanello of Cardel Bosco, founder and president CEO of Cardelbosco, school and former teenage rebel, but ultimately a Contadino and a very proud Contadino proud farmer who happens to make sparkling wine with washed grapes. We're great talking to you. Very stimulating guided to interview. I have get you back on the show, I think. We can I'd love to delve deeper into some of your rebellious rebellious times. And, I'd love to come and visit the watch either why did you harvest. Yeah. You must come during the island because it's something unique. If you like, you, you sort of made like, you've had great influences. If you, domental or romney Conte in Bordeaux, Veronelli, and also your parents. Yeah. You've made the most of all of those influences good or bad. And some people say, oh, I had a bad father or I had a bad this and didn't complain about it. It was like Yeah. And you've you've always stuck on the bright side. So that's great. It's nice to see you, Mari Tuzenella Kar elvosco. I hope we meet again. This podcast has been brought to you by Native Grape Odyssey, discovering the true essence of high quality wine from Europe. Find out more on native grape Odyssey dot e u. Enjoy. It's from Europe. Follow Italian wine podcast on Facebook and Instagram.