Ep. 2538 Italian Wine Podcast 4 Friuli: In conversation with Mattia Manferrari of Borgo del Tiglio winery

So give us kind of how we can help. I mean, I basically wanted to speak to you because how can we help? How can we help you right now in this moment? For us, I thought about this, and I I didn't want to raise any fundraising campaigns or something because it I I almost feel it's, unrespectful to the people who really lost lives, lost their homes. And I think that all the help should be channeled to them. Hello, Italian wine people. This is a bonus episode from Italian wine podcast. Stay tuned to discover more. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. My name is Stevie Kim. This is a special edition today. We are here with Mattia Manferari. This is an very unfortunate circumstance. I would have liked to have connected with you under better circumstances. But most importantly, we want to raise awareness for what's happened to Bolgo Tertiglio. There was a huge landslide which affected their winery and, of course, their neighbors and that whole area there. So we'll get right into it. Mathieu, first of all, how are you and your family? Oh, first of all, I have to thank you and thank all of the people that showed huge support with us. And, for us, this is incredibly important, and, I think it's where we get the strength to go in this moment. So really a huge thank you to everyone in this moment. I really feel this this huge force coming towards us, and, for us, it's it's really meaning something. So just tell us for those who are less aware, tell us what happened in Braco, which is kind of the Borgo or the hamlet that you live in, and how did the land start come about to affect Borgo Del Tylio? Yeah. So what happened is that during the night between Sunday and, Monday last week, a huge amount of rain fell down. They are talking about 300 millimeters of rain in just, seven hours. And this means that the water becomes nearly uncontrollable, and, this affected a huge portion of the cholera area with minor landslides and other flu floods and, a lot of things. Unfortunately, let's say, Bratsana was at the epicenter of what was going on, and, a huge portion of woodland placed on the hill above the winery suddenly detached and, ran down along a sort of a a small river and came down to our Borgo. And, the Borgo is made partly of the winery and partly of three houses. And, it was a huge amount of mud and trees, and they stopped inside the courtyard of the of the winery. And, unfortunately, they tore down a few buildings. And the the most tragic part is that two people were involved, and, they unfortunately didn't made it. Our enologist, Matteo, was also involved. He was trying to save the, old lady that was trying to escape. He was on a ladder, and he was trying to recover her from her house that partially already collapsed. Oh my goodness. And, he was helping her coming down the ladder. He was lucky in a way that he was on the top of the ladder while the other, man who was trying to help and the old lady were already down. So they were, hit by the landline in that moment, and they were under the rubble. So they, unfortunately, didn't make it. But, Matteo, fortunately, broke a leg and lost some blood, but he made it. So, also, my my thoughts are with him, and he's in the hospital, but he he's going to recover soon. So that's the good part of of this tragedy. You know, it's so so sad. I mean, in the beginning, I was actually confused because I thought it was actually you because your name is so similar, Mattia and Matteo. So I thought it actually you were trying to help the old lady. And, you know, it's a tiny Borgo. Right? It's a tiny hamlet. It's just few houses and your winery. Yeah. Because this is the historic part of our village, which is Barzano. It's placed on the feet of the hills, and it's slightly over the rest of the village. And, yeah, it's it's made up of the church who was, was intact after the landslide. Three houses that were going, up towards the hill. And, basically, the rest is all our winery and a few other houses that, fortunately, were not affected, by the landslide on the left because this happened on the right, let's say, looking from below. So give us kind of the state of the art, the status quo of the situation. Were you able to access your winery? Like, what parts of these states were mostly affected, and, what's been lost? What was damaged? What is the situation? Give us kind of an idea. Yeah. So what happened is that, all these mud and trees and everything, they told me there were 27,000 cube meters of dirt that fell down. Essentially, crushed with extreme violence towards these houses, one of which was part of our estate. They are on the right, considering our courtyard when you go in, it's on the right. And then they deviated onto the courtyard of of the winery. And there, they made another building collapsed. In this building, we were keeping our historical archive. So it's basically all of the bottles that we kept from the eighties until today. And then, it stops on the other side of the courtyard really near to the other buildings that form our wineries. What happened is that most of the mud is still sitting atop of our barrique cellar, which was built in 2006 and was, excavated under the hill. So before there was a containment wall onto which the historical buildings that were building the sixteen hundreds basically were sitting on. So the cellar was built excavating this portion of the hill that were directly adjacent to the old buildings and was under the hill, basically. This cellar was not affected, but now a ton of of dirt is sitting on top of it. So, we are trying to understand what can we do to put that place into a sort of a more secure position. Yeah. So you were able to access the winery, but you're not working at well, you can't it's not in a workable state right now. Is that correct? No. Because right now, the authority blocked access access to the whole area. So it's still everything is still evolving. We are not, not sure about what is going to happen. For now, they are talking about, blocking the access for one to three years. Mhmm. So for us, this, of course, is dramatic because it means, not being able to go on with the activity because, you know, if we we are not able to access for three years, this means we lose everything, basically. So we are trying to understand the evolving of the situation and, understand how can we possibly find a solution. The most immediate priority for us is to recover the wine because right now, the twin 2025 vintage is all in, and it's all buried inside this, internals into this, integrated cellar. And, and it's the the work of the last year. It's basically one year of work that is buried under there, and we are at least able to recover that. So we are trying to move with the authorities to understand what's the most, safe way to to recover that. What about what about the old vintages? Well, the older vintages are safe, fortunately Mhmm. Because we have a a stand alone warehouse where we keep the wine in the in the bottle. And that one, it was across the street. Oh, okay. Besides, some mud and, some minor damage, that part was safe. So at least, the bottles are are safe. Give us an idea, you know, for our listeners, our audience who are less familiar with Borgo del Tiglio. Give us kind of the contextualize in terms of how big the wineries is, how many labels you have, and how much volume, like, you produce. Sure. So the winery was founded in 1981 by my father. At the start, he started basically with two hectares of land. Now gradually over the years, we grew up to cultivating hectares. And, overall, we manage a volume of bottles of around 50,000 bottles. We work, with a sustainable approach, high quality approach, and, terroir driven approach. So we manage about fifteen, sixteen labels every year, all the small parcels, small batches of wine that, highlights the values of the single vineyards that we manage. So it's a fairly what I would say, you're kind of a small producer. Right? Very