Ep. 2529 Next-Gen Italian Wine Producers with Giovanna Bagnasco of Agricola Brandini | Masterclass US Wine Market

Introducing the Italian Grape Geek program, a new and original approach to Italian wines. IGG, as it's fondly known, is a book, a podcast, an online theory course, and an in person tasting course. Our pocket sized book briefly introduces 80 grapes with benchmark producers, helping you find and taste these great wines on your own. Space to make your own notes makes the book a personal record of your Italian wine journey. No time to read? We've read the whole book out loud with added insights from Italian wine ambassadors. Listen for free on Italian wine podcast. Obsessed with Italian wine? Take the super accessible online theory course. Get certified as an Italian grape geek. Want more? Our international IGG educators have got your in person tasting course to cap off your full IGG immersion. Go to mamajumboshrimp.com and sign up today. I think the biggest challenge in today's market, especially in The US, is really to build the brand. We are a young winery. We don't have a big name yet. So the idea is really to find a partner that still believes in taking on a winery, presenting to the market, and grow with that winery. So see the growth organically happen over over the years. So the idea is to partner with someone that has our same philosophy at the end of the day. Same values. Same values. And that we know that when we show up on the market, when I come and visit, we usually put my wines in front of people that care about the same things. Yeah. The right customers. And the right customers. But it's also honestly my strategy, if you call it like that, is just to honestly deprise it. Hello. Welcome to MasterClass US Wine Market with me, your host, Giuliana Colangelo. This show has been designed to demystify The US market for Italian wineries through interviews with experts in sales and distribution, social media, communications, and so much more. We will quiz each of our esteemed guests in every episode to solidify the lessons that we've learned from the episode. So sharpen your pencils, get out your notebooks, and join us this week to learn more about The US market. Hello. Welcome to MasterClass US Wine Market. Today, I'm thrilled to be here in person with Giovanna Vanyasco of, Unpola Brandini. So So on today's episode, we're gonna talk about next generation in Italian wine, women in wine, and leadership in Italian wine, and how Gio is leaving her mark, leadership of Uncola Brandini. It's very fun to be here in Brooklyn. How has your week in New York been? It has been amazing. Climate has been great. Back home when I left, we just finished harvest last week. Wow. And, the climate started to get pretty cold and chill. So Yeah. It has been good to be in New York on this beautiful week. Visit a lot of places. I haven't been back in three years. Oh, wow. I was really excited to see what was up at new places, see old friends. It has been very fun. Absolutely. And speaking of new places, we're here at a great wine bar called With Others in Brooklyn and Bladensburg. They feature a lot of women and wine and great owner of Shauna. So we're excited to be filming live today, which is so fun. Well, Gio, before we start, it's Friday. Let's have a sip of wine. What are we drinking? Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. We're drinking the Barolo del Camunda De La Mora 2020. So it's our village, but all of from the village of La Mora. So that's this bottle here. Yeah. Beautiful. Which, which is home. Yes. It's, La Mora is a village where we are. So it's kind of underlined what La Mora is known for, which is this beautiful elegance and pure flower for profile. Beautiful. Oh, that's so pretty. What vintage? 2020? 2020. Which is What a year. Yeah. What a year. What a year. The record, but great wine. Yes. We had a lot of time to farm. Yes. Exactly. It'll be really fun to get into the '20 vintage. Right? Absolutely. So for starters, tell us a little bit about Agricola Brandini. Obviously, you're in La Mora, in Piemonte, but a little bit about the family history of the winery. Yeah. So it's fairly recent winery compared obviously to the region that we are in that has had a lot of multigenerational family companies. We started in 2007 when my father acquired Estate and then really focused mainly on the farming for the first years and did not start making wine official until 2010. And that started really slowly until, honestly, the real beginning is when my sister and I decided to take over the state and, really made it our life and our job, and that was 2015. So since then, Serena and I have been managing the property, dividing between farming, winemaking, sales, managing. We also have a little hospitality on-site. Mhmm. We have a restaurant and hotel. So it has been a lot of fun. Become our life, and it's been a beautiful adventure. And you're a decade in. Congratulations. Thank you. That's a huge accomplishment. So on today's episode, some of our themes and takeaways and what we're really excited to talk to you about is this next generation perspective in Italy, specifically, a country and a region that's so steeped in history, especially in Piedmont. Right? So how the next gen is really coming into its own and with you and your sister really being at the forefront. But we also wanna understand how you approach The US market. You know, you've been here in New York for a week working the market. So what how do you make a trip like this successful? And finally, like, how are you adopting and evolving the brand to the consumer who's obviously changing as well? So those are a few of the themes we'll we'll talk about. But for starters, you mentioned briefly the history you took over fully in in 2015. Yeah. But in 2009, you started working on the farming as well. Talk to us a little bit about that conversion that you spearheaded to organic farming at Brandini. Yeah. I think, probably the biggest change that we have seen in the past decade in Barolo, but in general in in Italy, has been definitely into the farming side of farm making. I think we've all set the focus back into the vineyards, and, we are navigating climate change as much as every other region in the world. Of course. Yeah. So I feel like especially as a younger state without a big name or an established style in wine, the idea was let's go back to the one ingredients that wine is about, which are great. So if you I feel today, nowadays, if you still wanna make a Perolo that follows a tradition that is classic in terms of style and profile, you really need to change everything in the pot. Okay. That means navigating climate change, but also means respecting the soil. We are blessed to be in Barolo, which is one of the most beautiful wine region in the world. Yes. Yeah. But if we also wanna hope that the next four, five, 10 generation will do our job Right. We need to respect that soil. Right. We are probably the first generation to really see the results of climate change Of course. And pay a little bit the cost Mhmm. And the consequences of it. So I think, the idea is just to go back and spend a lot of time in the vineyard Okay. And change everything, like, from pruning to picking. If you think about the eighties and the nineties where, like, my grandfather generation were working in the vineyard, they had a calendar that they kept following because Quemonto was at four very distinctive seasons. Right. But nowadays, those four seasons are not there anymore. They're kind of mixed up. We see a lot of extreme, big storms, droughts, heat waves, which were not the case back then. So we needed to change all the from pushing pruning of two months to have late frost Right. From, pruning in a different way, everything they did back then. Because the biggest enemy usually was the cold climate, the humidity, the mental pressure. The fog, right? The negative The fog, all of that. Yeah. So nowadays, it's not the case anymore. The enemies want the drought, they eat, and these extremes. I've been in Piedmont in the summer. It's ho