Ep. 6 Monty Waldin interviews Virginie Saverys of Avignonesi Winery | Discover Italian Regions: Tuscany / Toscana

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. I'm with the Vialgini Savers from the Avignonese winery in Montapulciano. That's Montapulciano, the place in Tuscany, and the main one is called Vignor Norway, Noble wine. Firstly, why did you decide to, how did it come about? They became proprietorship of a new navy? Well, I was asked by the previous owners if I wanted to take over the shares of one of the brothers who was leaving the company, which I did. I thought it was a perfect idea to get to know more about wine, which I love so much for all my life. How did you go into contact with wine when you're younger then? Well, every good meal at home was always accompanied by red wine, usually from bordeaux and usually quite good. So, and where were you living? Were you living in France or? No. I was living in Belgium. That's obviously where you're from. Yes. And what did you do in Belgium before becoming a wine grower? I was, an lawyer in a shipping company, which belongs to my family. And, I was doing pretty different things than what I'm doing right now. Okay. So you're you're a legal training. Did you before buying the winery, were you obviously had a love for wine, but did you how did you prepare yourself technically on the technical side? Well, because it was a bit sudden when we suddenly took over one hundred percent of the winery. We decided we needed to have a crash course in wine business. So at the University of Bordeaux, ESVIVID, they organized these courses of continuing education in the first half of the year. And they really cover almost every team from the soil up to the finished product and how to tackle any issues you might have with winemaking. How did it feel going back school, you know, obviously you're not, a seventeen year old. How how was that? How would and also combining, you know, full time career, how difficult was that? I loved it. I really loved it. It was fantastic because we were in very small classes. We were max ten people, and we had the top professors from Broad University, So you were free to ask any question. You wanted to these very respected, professors. And, no, I think I've always liked going to university. I didn't like passing exams or studying for the exams mainly, but here, there were no exams involved. So that was great. You got a bit of technical knowledge. So when you took over the this very, it's one of the Italy's most famous brands by the avenue and Ezi, you had a look at the vineyards. What was your decision on on how to how to change them or were you gonna continue with the old way of doing things? Well, very quickly, I realized I wanted to change drastically the way things were tackled at a vegan easy. I was shocked when I saw how my staff had to dress up to mix the chemical products. They were spraying on the vineyards to the herbicides and the pesticides and so on. And having myself always been treated by homeopathy since I was a little girl having tried to eat organic as much as I can. I didn't think I wanted to do this with, my land, which was mine now, and I didn't want to do that to the people who work for me. They want to poison them. And I didn't want to poison the consumer who Indian drinks the bottle of wine. So how hard was that initially? I mean, that's, take you, how big is Avenue and easy? But how much vineyard are you? It's pretty big. Yeah. Well, Avenue and easy over, we had about two eighty acres, I think. And now we have something like four hundred and sixty acres. So that's quite big. I mean, you are one of the biggest organic, biodynamic producers on the planet. On the planet? Not, but I've been told we are the largest in Italy on in biodynamics. Yeah. You're in the top five or six, I think, on the planet. Yeah. Oh, good. Yeah. The bigger ones, the bigger ones in Australia. Really know they're behind Australia. Chile has one very large one. California has one very large one, and in Europe, I think actually you are the biggest. So maybe you're number three worldwide. Oh, that's not bad. That's great. Yeah. You've done something every day. Yeah. Okay. So, you talked about your staff. I mean, did you keep any of the old staff or did you make a clean break? And and if you did so, why? Everything, which is like winemaking and agronomy, I I I changed. The staff who is working the vineyards, the tractor drives, and so on, they are still there. But, I changed the stuff we had to go for younger people, people with also a more international approach to things, people who've lived outside of Italy, because I think it's important. I love Italy, but they sometimes have they have a beautiful word for it. They call it company Lismo, and unfortunately, so that means close to the the tower of your church. Unfortunately, that sometimes gives them not very open ideas to what's happening in the world. So I now have think the average age of my my management is thirty one or something like that. And that is incredibly low. And I give them a lot of responsibilities because I I travel a lot for the wine business and for my other business. Were they afraid of that responsibility initially, or do they thrive on it immediately? How did that how did they deal with that responsibility? Depends of whom some drive on it and some are a bit more worried. So you know how I mean, that's that's what a buzz is about. It's to know your people and know where you can go with which person and how you have to, tackle it with them. But did they buy into your sort of bio philosophy, initially or did they take a little bit of convincing? Oh, no. They had absolutely no problem with it. And I think that's the advantage of working with young people. Either they've never been confronted to conventional Viticulture or if they have worked in a winery, which works in a conventional way, they are still with an open mind, to innovation, to new things, to new techniques, If you're working with someone who's in his fifties and has to change, that's much much harder. And then my agronomist, he's never worked with chemical products. He doesn't know I mean, if you ask him the name of a pesticide, which he can use against Tin Yoletta or the grape moth or something like that. He wouldn't even be able to tell you the name. So I think that's lovely. One of the, people often look at organics, say one of the disadvantages is you actually need more manual labor, more physical labor, more people in the vines. What do you see? Do you see that as a problem or it was an advantage. I see that as a great advantage. I rather pay the people who live in my area and give them a living, a job to do than have money flow to the Monsanto, buyers, and BASFs of this world. For spraying products, which are in the end polluting the planet on which we live. And we, at the moment, we still have only one planet on which we can live. Yeah. Right. We haven't there's not like a plan b. We haven't got a plan b, have we? Let's see. So, what does the future hold? I mean, buy any more vineyards? Are you happy with Avignanese? No. I'm happy with the vineyards we have now. I really want to consolidate. We are though at Avignanesean. I think that's very important and this young staff likes that too. We're doing a lot of experiments in the vineyards and in the cellar. Do you want to do it like what? Pruning by the moon? Anything wacky like that? Or it's for instance, on five zero one, which is one of the biodynamic sprays to make the grapes taste riper. We are doing an experiment together with Ceretto. The plan was that there were also some wineries in France who joined, who would join, but at the moment, not much success. And so we're doing experiments of, when and how and what we do on a five zero one. And then what's the effect going to be? And we do separate modifications, of course. It's a parcel which is quite homogeneous. So you can compare. A parcel of vines. Yeah. A parcel of vines, so you can compare the grapes picked in one treated this way or treated that. Do you think that's been one of the downfalls or the disadvantages or the negative aspects, I should say, of the organic movement? There hasn't always been a lot of science. People say, I know that it works because I see it works, but people actually say, well, have you got any scientific data? Are you trying to change that? We don't really want to change that. But for us, biodynamics is insane, not the finality. What is important for us is that we get a balanced vineyard, which gives us healthy fruit in a way which is healthy for the planet as well. And so we are doing experiments with homeopathy as well. We are trying to avoid as much as we can using copper. So we are doing a lot of experiments with alternative products, which we add to the copper. We are around two kilos per hectare of copper per year, which is for those of you who don't know, copper is used to treat a a disease called Downy Millgi, and there's a sort of copper based spray that's now, but what virgin is saying is you're using much lower than the lower limit, low levels than the authorized level for organic regulation. I don't like the spring of copper because it's a heavy metal even though it's in a very, minute quantity, but still, my dream would be that in the future there will be a day where we will not be using any copper at all. That's all. Neither would we be using any sulfur? That's my big scheme for the future. Okay. So when you get home at night, you unwind and you get a glass of wine. What do you cook? What do you like cooking? Well, I've become a vegetarian since a number of years. I do eat a little bit of fish from time to time, and I love exotic food. So I love cooking Thai, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, And, so I love to use spices as well. I grow some fierce chilies in my vegetable garden, which, I then dry and, and grind. I think the great thing about our wines based on San Jose is that San Jose is a a grape varietal which goes really well with spicy food. It also strangely enough goes well with things like like sushi if you serve our also the Montepo channel a little bit cooler than you would, a normal red wine, and you drink that with sushi. It's perfect. I even had it with oysters. So, Centroveza is a very versatile grape varietal to combine with a lot of, food You talked about the Campinilismo earlier on about the the, sort of, just really not seeing further in the walls of your own village. So here you come, you got, you've revenue sides of it with biodynamics and you're cooking sushi and spicy food with red wine in that case, you really as crazy as this lady, totally nuts. Well, it's fantastic because in, the restaurant we have at the winery, last year, our our cook always gives like a little appetizer when people arrive. And last year, they made like a a Tuscan sushi as a little appetizer. Wishes. It was really nice and people liked it. Okay. Final question. What's your what's your next challenge? Personally, your profession? Well, as I as I said before, it's, having a a copper free, sulfur free, you know, ideally, but I think we are just a bit too big for that. If I could do all the work without tractors and go back to horses, but I think my kids would probably kill me if they hear that. Yeah. No. I know you and I have talked about that. I I I think versioning should everything that we've heard so far, I don't think you'll look disagree is to make your stables like straw bale constructions. And I think it'd be great if you could do that. Honestly, you would be a global leader if you could do it on a vineyard of your scale and your fame, and it's such a famous name over in your navy, and you have some space. It will take organization. I would absolutely love to see you do that. Brilliant. I don't know when I saw Ponte canet in Bordeaux. Mhmm. And that's why they do it as well, but Ponte canet, I think they do the entire wine, vineyards. And they're quite big as well. Eighty hectares. Yeah. It's it's fabulous. The wines are much more expensive than mine. So Yeah. Did you have animal? I was just out of interest. Do you have animals when you get them in that horses or I'm not just doing dogs and cats, but I mean, they're quite sporty. I don't have myself a lot of animals at home because unfortunately I'm a bit allergic to animals. We have a a cat which is half feral, but I feed her, and I can even give her a hug from time to time. But, I would love to have some cows at Avinean Hazy so that we make our own dung for the preparation five hundred I would like to try as well with these, very little sheep from Wason. Baby doll sheep. Because they could they could be like my grass mower in the vineyards. Yeah. So the the idea with the baby dog, they're they're small. They eat the grass, they're not tall enough to nibble the grape. Exactly. And they're doing falls in the vineyards, and so it's an automatically fertilizer in your vineyards. Okay. Virgeny, surveys fascinating. I look forward to coming back and seeing three members of staff and eighty five thousand sheep in your vineyard to talk to you. Thank you very much for queueing in. Thank you, Monte. Follow us at Italian wine podcast on Facebook.