Ep. 150 Monty Waldin interviews Aldo Vacca (Produttori del Barbaresco) | Discover Italian Regions: Piedmont / Piemonte

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. Hello. This is the Italian wine podcast. My name is Montewood. My guest today is Aldo Vaca. Aldo is the managing director of the Proctor del Babaresco, which is basically the cooperative in the Babaresco region, which is in Piamonte, Al welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. So first question is, how big is your cooperative? How many members or Soshi do you have? We have fifty four members, farmers. We produce, health a million bottles, and we control around hundred ten hectares of nepiolar grapes out of a total of the population of seven hundred. So for Babaresco, we are a large winery, but in the scheme of the wine world, we are relatively medium sized. Right. So the escrow cooperative is known in Italy as being, if not one of the best, certainly the best cooperative. What is the secret of your success? Is it the fact that you're fairly small sized and you have fantastic turf, why was it a little bit more than that? That is true, but it's a little bit more than that. There's one secret of the success the decision that was taken at the the year of the foundation in nineteen fifty eight to focus on one grape only in Nebula and one wine only, Barbara. And everything came consequently out out of that decision. Back in those days, it wasn't an easy decision. In fact, it was a bit of a marketing suicide to do that. Parbaresco was not an easy wine to sell, and it was not the wine widely consumed. Of course, local people were drinking mainly Dolceto, Barbara. And, Barbbaresco was reserved for special events, maybe twice a year for a wedding or anniversary, and usually in those special occasions, but always the choice. So here we are. We have a wine, which we have a reputation, but without much of a market. A wine limited to special events, and it's a second choice for those. Focusing on that wine only for a winery. It was quite, a big, step. And even nowadays, we are the only winery in the region that is a monovarietal, basically, makes only barbaresco and crashes only in the flow from the Babrescooperation. So because of that decision made, like, marketing business, like, difficult, it forced the winery to produce quality. The only way to survive on the market, if you make only Babresco is to make it good because Babresco doesn't have the it never had low end market. And also, even more important, he forced the farmers the sochi to build a quality mindset when they were growing their grapes. In the years when everything was more focusing about quantity, you know, in the fifties, sixties, the seventies, these farmers took the opposite way because it was the way for them, to survive. The decision on making only, Barbara, was not easy, but the founder of the Windry was the local priest. Really? Don't fear, you know, which was not a young prize that was moved by the bishop in Barbara nineteen fifty four. And he had this idea of, you know, giving a chance to the villagers to make a better living and maybe saving his parish because everybody, of course, were kind of selling their land and moving to Torino, to milano. So that was, that may seem strange to us today that, you know, Barbara and Lebio and Piamonte, beautiful area, but in those days after the warranty was incredibly poor, and the Italian economic miracle happened after the war, where famous brands like Fiat, for example, were churning out cars that, everybody wanted to buy. And, obviously, you're guaranteed a salary in the city. It's much easier, well, not easy work, but more reliable work should we say than working on sloppy hard slopes in the Babaresco region on, you know, on a hot day. So that is why people were leaving the land so that must have been a real struggle, when the priest said, listen. Let's let's try and preserve our heritage. And the only way we can do it is by sticking together, right? Stick it together together. You can achieve something that would be impossible to do on on your own because you are too small of your own winery. And so if you grow your land, you're forced to sell your grapes and the price is set by the buyers. That was what was happening in the fifties. So what is this? I mean, in terms of what is the the typical size on average of your Sashi of your members. And what range are we talking about? Well, he was the smallest and who was the biggest in terms of size. The average size is like two hectares, which is tiny. Very tiny. There's a number like a dozen of sochi that they just have just a half an egg egg to very tiny. They're just like the local postman or an old lady in the village that still has a piece of land. And then there are some of the shots you there, four, five, one, the biggest is eleven hectares. So It's still very small. Yeah. Still very small. Again, usually too small to have your own winer, although this days, you can start a boutique winery and sell your wine, Barbaresco, for fifty euros a bottle. But in those days, it was practically impossible. So that decision making on in the biola was very crucial. Then, of course, the terroir is very important. The fact that Barbaresco was a little behind by followed in terms of, sales and marketing and reputation, the result of that fact was that the owners of the top crews, the top plane in Barbaresco in the fifties were basically still farmers. Like a lot of the best vineyards in Barolo were already owned by people making wine in Babresco, they were still farmers. And so when the priest was able to convince, now the priest in those days had had enough charisma, these days will not be like that because, there were nineteen farmers, the original founders, you know, stubble and Pemunty's farmers, not very easy to get along, but the priest pushed them. And so the farmers that joined, they actually own pieces of the great cruise. I think we are the only at least one of very, very few wine cooperative in Europe where they can claim control on the majority of the ground crews, if you wanna call so of of the region. So terroir is very important. The decision on focus on that there were only and Babresco only and not spreading to Dolceto Barbera white wines. The other decision was very important at the beginning was the one hundred percent delivery. So my fifty four farmer they deliver to the winery only the nebulo grapes that they grow. If they grow, they do whatever they want. But when it comes to the nebulo, they have to deliver one hundred percent of their nebulo. So they cannot compete with the cooperative. Lot of companies allow their farmers to do both. And now we we trust them, but not too much. So we prefer they are obliged to deliver all the nebulity they grow so they cannot keep on the best one and deliver. They're not so good. So very, very focused on that. And finally, the third decision was taken right from the beginning from day one, was the quality reward. The higher quality of the grapes, the more money per kilo of grapes. So how many grades are there in terms of qualities? Grades, five grams. Thirty one. Thirty one grades. Thirty one. We're just growing grapes. Yes. It's very precise. We measure quality these days by measuring for each load of grapes, sugar color and tendons at the beginning was just sugar, but every single load of grapes that comes to the winery is weighted, crushed, as simple as is taken, like half a pint of juice, put in to a spectrophotometer, and three numbers pop out from the spectrophotometer, sugar level, color brightness and ripeness of the fending or the phenolic of the tenons. So by measuring color, sugar, and tenons, we have a precise quality judgment of that single batch. And at the end of the harvest, we build the board from the lower quality to top quality. Last year, just to give you an example, we paid two point five euros per kilo up to five point six. So thirty one steps of ten cents. Every extra color, every extra sugar level gets ten, twenty, thirty extra cents per kilo. So the farmers are very focused. They deliver the grapes multiple times, you know, they pick one vineyard first because it's ripe. They wait for the other little plot to rip a little longer. If rain is coming, they may deliver the bottom of the hill first and wait for for top of the hill to survive the rain. If the weather is nice, the top of the hill comes in first, and the bottom hill ripens a little longer in the October sun. So they take those decision themselves, but they know that the better quality they deliver at the time of the more money will be in their pocket. We don't really pay grapes. We share profit. So the more successful is the business, the bigger is the cake to be shared. Our biggest single piece of the cake is depends on how much land the farmer owns and how good is grapes were in that given vintage. Now, this is something that a lot of properties, a lot of wineries do these days, although the thirty one steps is quite rare, but quality reward really started to be came sector in the lungo in Pimonte by in the eighties. We started to implement that from nineteen fifty eight. They really again set the Pruntory apart from many other car opportunities. Yes. I set the barber esque cooperative. And some people probably wondering, what why people would want to bother just selling grapes rather than making their own wine. If you're a small producer, you're not gonna have the economy of scale to buy vats or to build a winery, and then there's all the commercial side, you know, all the legal side, the designing labels and bottling and corks and storage and boxes and and invoices and customs declaration, all that sort of stuff. So they're kind of avoiding that, which means that they can actually focus on one thing which is growing the grapes, and that is why this system, that's the great advantage of the system of the cooperative in general, but also this particular cooperative that there was this absolute focus using these quality parameters. Yes. And then, of course, they also have if you wanna start your own winery, besides all the things you mentioned, you also have to be willing to deal with people and be nice with people. And I tell people, these farmers, sometimes they just like to stay on their own. So, no, there's a lot of skills that are required to be to start a successful winery. Of course, these days, it will be easy for someone to do it because these days the market is booming. But at this point, the product is so well established and we we pay their grapes so well that from a strictly financial point of view, there's no reason to leave productory. Of course, if you are a with a good piece of land, and you have a big ego, and you wanna put your name on the label, then you leave and start your own winery. But if you look on the finances of the economy, it just doesn't make any sense. So in the sixty years of lifetime of Proctori, only four farmers left less than one per decade to start their own winer. And we got some new. So from nineteen, we grew up to fifty four. It's been a nice, balance. We're still small, but, you know, we we control more than half of the Napiola Vignas in the village of barbaresco itself. So we're very much a barbaresco village winery. Do you have any contact with other high quality cooperatives in Italy? Say, for example, in the market there. They're quite known for some really high quality coasters mainly producing, white wine, but also a little bit of red. Do you get together and chat stuff or not? Occasionally, but not in a I thought about doing the Venitally fair or other fairs together with top wine cooperatives or bringing the message of the cooperatives, in the wine fairs. But then, we we never actually get that. Of course, I I know several of them and we are in good good relationship, but we we start we think more about us just like ever as a winery. So I sometime I I do promotion and, and the marketing with other private the unwineries from the same region rather than trying to to coordinate the effort with, properties from other regions. It just seems like PMontes kind of stick together. So what about the main markets? We sell seventy percent of our production, in the export market. The number one market, like everybody has implemented these days is the USA. We sell one third of our total production to the US and the main states, California and New York. But we have a good market in the northwest. So Oregon, Washington State, there've been, loyal followers of Piamonte wines and Prudito Barbarisco in specific for, since the 90s, but of course, California and New York State are the big the Boston area, of course. So that's also, you know, the usual the usual big market, but it's also a growing market. Actually, we cannot keep up with the demand. So we are not really exploring much of the new markets, like Eastern Europe or or the Far East. So we sell more in the historical markets, which are Northern Europe, North America, and Japan. That's our the big chunk of our export market. And then thirty percent or one again is the domestic market. Because Proctor de barbaresco is a very strong brand locally around, you know, in Piamonte. Isn't that a good thing? It's a good thing. It's good to be present in the local restaurants because, of course, we have flocks of tourists coming. And then, you know, it's nice to be well received from the local people. Sometimes, you know, rest resident local people, they want of course, they want to drink a a good local wine, but maybe they don't wanna spend the extra money that comes with the reputation shooting. So they know that they can trust Proctori as a a very true barbaresco, very good quality and very good value as well. Excellent. Thanks very much. And Lovaca for explaining the ins and outs of the cooperative system at the Pruditori Babaresco. Thank you. I to say Italy's number one cooperative, but I think you, yeah, I'm pretty safe saying that Italy's number one cooperative to hear about the history, and to get a real sense of what it is like being in a cooperative because it's in some ways it's a bit of a closed word. Oh, it's just people just dump their grapes and they get paid by kilo, and they're just going for yield and all that. But in your case, with these parameters that you and your team, have laid out, show that it's a very complex, but very, I think a very fair system that you've created. Yes. It's very fair to have all the farmers. Again, that's why we measure the quality with a machine. So there's enough. No debates. No debates. And it's a relatively simple because it's a well oiled machine that we are we have been, sixty years ago. For sixty years. Yeah. And it's just one grape. Yeah. So the mix life a little easier when it comes to the quality evaluation and the strategic decisions to be taken. So we make we have three labels, the lungine biola, which is the introductory level, which is the classified barbaresco, basically, then we make the barbaresco, which is a blend of nebulo grapes from the region from the population. And then in the best years, we also release nine single vineyards, like a grand cru, dinosaur convenience from the village of barbaresco. We select cherry pick the best grapes from those nine vineyards, age them a couple of extra years and sell them under the reserve program. So what are what are some of the names of those crews? Azili, very famous, always high scores. These are all geographical sites. It's, for example, I live in the Ovello region on top of the hill, but the the the vineyards around my house, that's the Ovello area. So strictly a difference in terroir, you know, a little bit little bit more sand, a little more calcium, a little closer to the river, a little steeper, self exposed, the south least. Now those things that makes a difference from one vineyard to the other, we need to find exactly in the same way on on purpose just to show the terroir rather than trying to make the wine better or or more similar. So a great thing to do if you're a student of wine and you're allowed to and you ask, Aldo and his team very, very nicely would be to go into the winery at harvest time. Maybe a few weeks after the harvest has started to taste the different cruise as they finished fermenting to get a sense of barbaresco from the cooperative point of view, but also the the individualities that go up to make the blend at the end. That would be a fascinating thing. I don't know if you allow people to do that, but, not on a regular basis, because we're having a fight, but occasion, you know, I I organized, like, charge a thousand euros per ticket. You know, maybe they get a plate of salami as well. Yeah. But it's true that the horizontal tasting, so the same vintage, nine vineyards. Vineified exactly in the same way. It's a fascinating ex fascinating experience because it's the same way you're making, and you can appreciate the little, nuance of the tour. Aldo Vaca from the Proctor del Babaresco, which is the Barbara cooperative. Thanks very much for opening the door to your wonderful cooperative in Piamante. Thank you. And you spoke beautifully and eloquently about the benefits of being in a cooperative, and it's good to hear. I I like it when people work together. Italy's always are the such individuals, which you guys are, but, when you work together and and produce the results that you do that shows that team works sometimes is a great thing. Yes. It's a good thing and it's it's well managed. It it works fine. Everybody's happy. You know, the money flows nicely and the reputation is there. So the farmers are also proud to be part of something so special. Great stuff. The bank approved the today, but let's go. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Follow Italian White Podcast on Facebook and Instagram.