Ep. 78 Monty Waldin interviews Assunta De Cillis (Cantina Due Palme) | Italian Wine Coops

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. This podcast has been recorded during Vivite an event organized by the the alliance of Italian corps. Hi. My name is Monte Gordon. This is the Italian wine podcast. My guest today is Ascento De Chiles, who is the general manager of a cooperative called Cantine Duepalme, which is in Salento in Punya. Welcome. Thank you. Alright. Give us a little bit about the history of the, of the cooperative. When was it founded? Cantine de Palme is a social operative. Was born in nineteen eighty nine. And, from an idea, Angelo Marci, that is our president and, winemaker. So what was Angelo Marci? What did he do? Was he a wine grower? Yeah. He's a wine grower. And the third generation of wine grower, the idea was to keep together some growers in our area, grower of, our indigenous grapes, Malvasia, negromaro, primitivo, San Giovanni, and other indigenous grapes. Now, we have, six wineries and, in two wineries, in the cellinos and mapo, we produce, salento, I GT wine, and continue the apartment is, in the middle of three province of, taranto, Brindisi, and Lecha. We produce mainly, negramaro, and Primitivo, and Magasianera, because our main indigenous grapes, which produce, a delicious Valentino doc, Salish, a Brindice adopt, and, spoonsaladoc, and other important, Salento, IGP wine. So how big is it in Tokyo? How many hectares of vineyards do you have in Tokyo roughly? We have, in total, one thousand growers members of our cooperative. And, in total, we have two thousand five hundred hectares, vineyard. Do your growers have any other crops as well? I mean, it's a very fertile region area of that part of bouille. Do they grow grain, the granodoro? Do they grow, do they have sheep to make cheese? In the south of, of Pulea, we say usually that the Pulea region is divided into parts In the north of Pulia region, they produce table grapes. And in the south of Pulia region, we produce grapes on our alberlo poulies. So it's bush wines, alberlo. Yeah. Push wine. Yeah. We produce It turns brighter. This is very dry there. Right? Yeah. Alberto Puleza is, is resist to the dry season. Are all your primitivo vines that are they all bush trained or do you have some spallata with wires. Both. Which is which is it which did the old is it the older growers that love their Yeah. Bush finds these are the younger ones that want to be more mechanized and put posts and wires in? Yeah. In fact. Do you think there's a difference in quality between the two? Are you a traditionalist or and install a bit of both. We're big. So our cooperative, give the opportunity to give to our growers the machine in order to pick up the grace by machine. And To harvest grace the machine. Yeah. So it's a very diplomatic answer. You're prepared for all eventualities. Okay? No. Because we have some growers that are this this kind of, of machine and other growers that pick up the the rest by hand. Okay. So what what does that mean now? How do you and how do you make the passito wine? Prasito would produce primitivo pulia de manduria doppu. In fact, we are the another winery in, Lizzano, in the provinces of Taranto, which we produce the primitivo in Menduria Doc. As you know, I'm sure that you know that is, according to the regulation, to the law, we have to produce, to vinify this grapes in the area, in the production area. So for this reason, we have these two wineries in the provinces of Taranto, primitive adopto, and primitive of Salento we produce in the one of cellinos and Marco, is our main, final one. Is there a bit of a difference between those two users? Both primativa, but is there what is the difference in taste between a primativa from one side from primativa to the Mendo side? The the organoletic characteristics are are the same, but in the pimentivo puglia or Salento, we can produce maximum nine nineteen tons per hectare. And Menduria less or less. It's it's much hot as dryer there, as well. Yeah. This is this is the different, the main characteristics. And also that the soil is different because, in Salento, we have, sandy soil. Lizzano, Taranto. We have, soft stone, Yeah. Yeah. With a limestone base of it. Yeah. Just some mineral water can give to the to the grapes, the other characteristics. So when we think of like modern trends, we're drinking a lot of white wine prosecco, life is and then and then we you're confronted with a with a primitive with a mandurier, maybe even a passito, which has got a bottle of alcohol plus lots of sugar. How do you sell that wine? I mean, what what kind of food does it go with? How do you make it an attractive proposition? For a health conscious, young, you know, aerial kind of person that doesn't want these big heavy wines. Thanks to for for this interesting question. And a very long question as well. Yeah. No. We produce now. We are famous for the production of red wines, but we produced the red grape. In fact, our main grape are primitive and negromato. We produced negromato grapes, and we identified this negrometer tomorrow in white, and we produced our memento, ma'am. Do you make a sparkling wine? Yeah. Made in the same way as prossecco from Negro. Yeah. From Nagro. Negro. Negro. We've been fighting the white, and the rosette. And, you can be sure that if you test one prosecco and one negramaro, bubbles of negramaro, you don't know the the difference because our and we produce this, this wine So for the future, whose idea was it to make them a white sparkling wine from this very red red wine area, red wine grapes, hot reach, and whose idea was that? The technology in the winery, the investment in this year, Kim Of health. Kept a a path to to produce this this this product. Mhmm. I very appreciate from the young people and the old people. At least that is one of the advantages because normally they say that like in Champagne, the grapes must be harvested by hair and in prosecco, for example, the glera gate can be harvested by machine. As you're in Salento and the tradition is, bush wines, are your sparkling wines made from red grapes that are handpicked or machine picked, or both. Both. Because, we we harvest this, this grape and the beginning of August. So a little bit earlier than normal. Yeah. And, the basses commande. To make the bass white? Yeah. Of chardonnay, for example. And Neigramaro. Negramaro, because mainly for the basil pomante, we we use negramaro grapes. We obtain two results. The first one is, that method of Sherman, and the second one, we produce a very good grape because, with the nira Demento. Green harvesting. It's possible to have some wine very high quality. So you're using the the green harvested grapes, which is a little bit, sit which is how they would be in champagne for the sparkling wine as well. Yeah. Yeah. This is the the secret. So we obtained two special results. What about the older growers? The real traditional growers who who treat liters of sixteen alcohol primitivo every day. Each time. Do they see these sparkling wines as as a threat to tradition, or do they see it as progress, inevitable progress? What's their view? We think that Primitivo is, the upgrades, and we would prefer to keep the tradition methods, to to obtain, primitive or the mandurial grades. We picked by hand these, these grapes, and, we put in this plateau, little boxes. Okay. Small small crates. Yeah. And, we have a salad passiminto. So you have your own drying room for the, drying a tray. Yeah. But you that's a natural drying room. It's, you know, like yeah. So it's basically a a a room with with, the net through which air can pass. You're not like you don't have an artificial heater. You don't need it into that, you know, in that area, I think. And the bubble degrees from, twenty two, after this, process, you know, more than thirty by and we we mitigate this, this grape, after one month. So you let you let them dry for a month or two months, then you press? Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. And then you create you make the fascieta one. You age it in, wooden casks, I would imagine. Yeah. So what's a good, Abhininda, what's a good dish to go with, a primativa de mandoria pacito. With cheese, seasonal cheese, and, from, like pecorino. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit spicy. Yeah. And what about the cheeses that have herbs they age with herbs around them to make it a little bit more flabble? Is that a good match or is that too too strong? Yes. Yes. And also in this in this case, because What about how that? What about meat? An yellow lamb? An yellow lamb, beef, strong, Strong food. One other question. What are your main markets? How much did you sell in Italy and how much do you sell, abroad to bottled wine, not black wine? We, in total, we exported two twelve million bottles of wine. And how much how much do you produce overall? What percentage is exported? Is that fifteen percent, twenty percent? Eighty percent. Eighty percent exported. That's incredible. You told me just the bottle wine, not bulk wine. No. No. No. Everything. Yeah. Okay. Because in total, we produce more than, to twelve million bottles. But our main market at the north of Europe, Germany, Oland, Switzerland, China. Do you do any organic wines? Because the monopolies in Sweden are very keen on organics now, aren't they? We produce organic wine, but at the moment, we export a lot of, a wine of Salicia Valentino reserve of wine that I wanna play. Which is organic? No. It's not organic. Okay. But we produce organic wine. And I I think for the future, we'll become a very good market in in general because a lot of people prefer and ask for asking is asking for organic wine. And it's very easy where you are as well. It should be quite an easy place to be organic in Cemento. Yeah, it's very easy because a lot of our members grow this grape according to our organization because we organize, this this growers that fortunately follow our suggestion. Your you have a protocol. Yeah. Yeah. A laptop. For for the future, I think that is, a very, a laptop of requests, and this is the future market, I think. Okay. But so that all sounds pretty good. Sounds very positive. Thank to Assunto De Chiles, who is the Director general of the Cantilidoue Palme in Chelino Sanmark on a province of Brindisi in Pulia in a beautiful Salento area. I hope to come down and see you, sometime soon. It's an area know Freddie, my father-in-law is, is where he was from, and, wish you and your growers every success. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. This episode has been brought to you by Vin Italy twenty eighteen. Taking place in verona from April fifteenth to eighteenth. Vin Italy is the wine exhibition that helps you discover and get to know Italian wine and features over four thousand two hundred wineries. Follow Italian wine podcast on Facebook and Instagram.