Ep. 1339 SimonPietro Felice | On The Road Edition With Stevie Kim

By now, you've all heard of Italian wine Unplugged two point o. The latest book published by Mamma jumbo shrimp. It's more than just another wine book. Fully updated second edition was inspired by students of the Vin Italy International Academy and painstakingly reviewed and revised by an expert panel of certified Italian wine ambassadors from across the globe. The book also includes an addition by professor Atilio Shenza. Italy's leading vine geneticist. The benchmark producers feature is a particularly important aspect of this revised edition. The selection makes it easier for our readers to get their hands on a bottle of wine that truly represents a particular grape or region to pick up a copy, just head to Amazon dot com, or visit us at mama jumbo shrimp dot com. Welcome to another episode of On The Road Edition, hosted by Stevie Kim. Each week, she travels to incredible wine destinations interviewing some of the Italian wine scene's most interesting personalities, talking about wines, the Foods, as well as the incredible travel destinations. Hello, everybody. My name's Stevie Ken, and we are back. This is the on the road edition. Of Italian wine podcast, and thank you all for following us. Today, we are actually, in Tuscany. Again, we seem to be here quite often lately. The town is called Vinci, because it is actually the native birth town birthplace of Leonardo that Vinci. We're here on a special occasion inaugurating a special part of the museum of Leonardo DaVinci. So, mister Felicci is the CEO of of the Caviera Group, but also, specifically Leonardo da vinci winery. And will ask him to tell us a little bit about that. So welcome. Thank you very much. So can you tell us a little bit where we are contextualize where Vinci is geographically, where it's located? Yes. Absolutely. We are in the town of Vinci, about, thirty five kilometers from Florence. And this is where in, fourteen seventy three, Leonardo was born. When he was two years old after the the mother stopped and nurturing him, he was given to the grandparents and to his uncle and lived for fifteen years in the countryside of Inxi where people were making wine, oil, other fruits of the the the the the country. And you can imagine, Yonardo, so young, so curious about how could nature make possible the transformation from a plant to a fruit and from a fruit type like light grapes into wine. So this curiosity most likely made him become the winemaker that he was when he was of an older age. So he nurtured his curiosity in vines and grapes, but from Vincing. Bernardo was especially curious in the transformation of a liquid like must. Into wine. And if you think about it, the true liquids are quite different from each other. Sure. Must as certain smell and taste and color. And wine as, fortunately, for us, different smell taste and color. And the process of transformation of these two liquids is what really hit its curiosity on how the fermentation was taken process what were the characteristic that made the fermentation evolve in the right way? Like, keep the liquid cold, avoid contact with oxygen, keep it close after you finish the winemaking, And that's something that he that curiosity lived with Leonardo all his life. We know that when he was living in Milano, he asked for one gift, Evinyards, not a Castle, Evinyards, to stay longer in Milano. You know, Leonardo DaVinci, his passion for for wine. I don't know if you can say it was discovered here, but the wine making, this kind of this method that you have, I don't know if it's a trademark, if it's corporate, whatever it is, it's called the leonardo method. What is it exactly? Leonardo's method is a method for making good wine. It is made of four components. How to grow your vines how to fertilize the land of your vines, how to extract the mustard, how you transform the mast into wine, and how you preserve conserve the wine into time. To be very sincere, the method is nothing out of the blue. It's it's what we all do to make good wine. Right? Not when he actually Not at not at that time. Right? In a in a in the fifteen hundred to my knowledge, no other countries, no France, North Spain, nor other countries, and any methodology on making good wine. What we are trying to make in the rental method is to investigate his research and use it to take the technology that is now available to make good wine. Nothing more. We we cannot be more genius than Yonardo, and we don't try. But we try to be good at colors. Are you telling me that before Leonardo da vinci, people really didn't know how to make wine. I mean, of course, it turned into vinegar mostly. Right? So everyone knew that, but So before the owner of DaVinci, so we're talking about fifteen hundreds. Yeah. Is that right? Fifteen? There was no technically winemaking culture. Is that what you're saying? Exactly. The evidence from history, Stevie, is that, before Leonardo, to drink the wine, they needed to add other components to make it tasty. Honey, water, some some salt. I think what he was really perhaps like great, his claim too famous because he always documented everything. So perhaps, like, he was the first, not wine maker, Pase, but he was the first one to document it so that he was able to continue the storytelling side. Right? And I guess it, you know, I guess this is why we're wearing it today because I saw in the inauguration of the museum, the small little, like, notebooks. Right? Jernando always kept a a a notebook in his pocket, and he was a very good observer. Every time he saw something that hit his curiosity, he will stop, observe it, try to understand the phenomena that was behind the observation, and replicate it later on in the laboratory. That was the real revolution of Leonardo. The knowledge is passing to us. Before Leonardo, it was only probably father, to son, and mother, to daughter, passing the knowledge. Yonardo was the first scientist that took care of, passing knowledge in a written way. Yeah. That's fantastic. So can you tell us, you are you are actually the CEO of the Kavira group. Right? And Leonardo da vinci winery is one part of it's part of Cabito. Is that correct? Is that correct? Okay. So can you tell me just a little bit for our audience, what cavito is? And also it's linked with Leonardo DaVinci winery. Are you enjoying this podcast? There's so much more high quality wine content available for mama jumbo shrimp Check out our new wine study maps, our books on Italian wine, including Italian wine unplugged, the jumbo shrimp guide to Italian wine, Sanjay Vazil, and other stories, and much much more. On our website, mama jumbo shrimp dot com. Now back to the show. Cabiro was founded in nineteen sixty six in Romania by four founding Cantina Suciani, social winery so that Cabiro could hold the brands but all all the wine that he we received from, the founding partners and sell it to the market. Cabiro's major, most famous brand is never made. After the first original wineries, another twenty three for a total of twenty seven join the first four So twenty seven wineries? Yeah. Twenty seven wineries. When did they join? In the nineteen sixties. Okay. It's always, yeah, in the beginning. In the beginning. In nineteen sixty nine, so three years after the foundation of Cabiro, Cantino leonardo da vinci winery, in Vinci join the Cabiro. Oh, okay. When I continue onardo da Vinci joined, it brought with it the asset that he has, the trademark of Leonardo in the winery category. Oh, so they already had the They already had the trademark. And they were able to obtain the trademark because they were the. Oh, oh, I understand. So I have a question for you. Because I saw da vinci. There is also da vinci wine. The one that Gallo makes. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, okay. It's all it's so it's always you. Yep. Because that is Davinci. It's not Leonardo Davinci. In two thousand and nine, I believe I wasn't already in Kavir. Gogalo, came to Tuscany. It was making trade of wine as as you as you can imagine. And he discovered this continual Lonardo da vinci. He talked first to the winery, then chukaviro, because the brand was already belonging to chukaviro. And he said, I, I like this brand, and I like the county. I would like to be the distributor in all Americans. It was the Davinci. It didn't like Donardo because at that time, Bernardo Dicaprio was very famous. So he didn't want to be associated. That's so funny. That's a funny story. He didn't want to make any confusion. Is that Create any confusion when Leonardo did copy. That's crazy, though. We insisted. Yeah. We insisted for a few months. They Yeah. We call it. But they were lucky because I think the year after they launched the DaVinci brand, a very famous book came out. Khodice da vinci. So immediately, everybody started calling DaVinci because they knew of the book, and that's probably one of the reason why it became so popular. Oh my goodness. So this museum is the museum of the owner of DaVinci. This is kind of the museum, a place, a destination, let's say, in Vinci. Not really. The the main Leonardo Museum is on top of us. In the in the castle behind us, he owns a lot of objects, reproduction of the DaVinci models for flying, for carrying water upstream. Bernardo was such a genius. It it did so many things that is hard to imagine. We instead dedicated this museum, which is called the Leonardo Vinci winery, to the main project whether we have, telling people that Leonardo was a genius also in winemaking. When did the start in two thousand and nineteen. Oh, so recently. Just before COVID. Yeah. Exactly. As soon as we open it, it was COVID. COVID. For two years, it was closed. Then we renovated everything. And in today, we just opened the the the new show. The the idea here is that you take about twenty minutes to visit this museum as you see is is quite small. And in twenty minutes, you you you want to know why Leonardo got so fined of winemaking because we are in Vinci because this is a county land for hundreds and thousands of years since the Roman, here, they've been making wines, and some hints of studies. What he studied about how to do agriculture, how to transfer mask into wine, how to preserve it, how he painted some grapes and and some wines in in in his life. You know that in the last supper, Jesus just understood it. It was going to die. Mhmm. And what he does, he tries to reach the glass of wine as the as for wine to go over our our normal life time. So wine is a protagonist and he's he's he's he's mine. Exactly. So this is just a graph. You if you come here, you want to come back with an idea that Hernandez was fond of wine. Yeah. So maybe you you will read a book about it, you were drink a glass of wine of a Bernardo da vinci, but it's not just a genius of very abstract things. It was also a genius of very conquer. So what is just Tell us a little bit about da vinci winery. How many labels are there? How many wines? One is da vinci. Oh, okay. Da vinci is dedicated. And that's significant. Right? It's significant. As I said, it's about two million bottles. Right. So It's dedicated sugar. And Gallo distributed in all Americans. Then we have Villa Davinci. Villa Davinci are our crew. Okay. You have a single vineyard. Single vineyards. Right. And there are four wines. All of them have the name of an actual vineyard of Leonardo. Then we have fifteen o two Davinci in Romania. Because in fifteen o two, Leonardo came to Romania. Okay. And so we make made the line of wine from Romania, like sangiovese, Trebiano Right. Then we have a line called Capolavore masterpieces. Each label is one of his nineteen paintings. Nornago did nineteen paintings like Meliza in his lifetime, and so we have a line of nineteen You have nineteen labels? Nineteen labels. Plus the cruise and the romagna. So how how many in total? In total, I believe at thirtieth. Oh my goodness. So what is your vision in terms of going onward in terms of the for the wines? I think we have the potential of increasing our production, maybe to six or seven million bottles. I would not want to increase it too much. Cabiro is a very mass market company. As you know, so we have already in Cabiro, large production. Davinci, in my opinion, should always remain a true binary close to being here, as I said, it's three kilometers from here with a nicer room where we talked about Leonardo and his passion for wine. I think my opinion, if a lot of people in time would know about the passion of Leonardo to wine, whether or not we sell more wine, that will be good for the Italian wine making because in my opinion, we have a genius like like Leonardo that was really anticipating so many of the methodology still used today all over the world to make a good wine. So let's taste one wine. We have one here. It's actually, it's white. What are we drinking? We're drinking vermantiro. Okay. Vermantina. So The the label is called strada. Strada is the name of very small stream of water running through the vineyards and is the original name of four particles of Leonardo. So you own four parts for vineyards called Sreda. We don't know whether it was nerve ranting or not. Oh, okay. Consistency. We we don't know that. But we believe so because it's next to the river, very fresh. Colder temperature than up up up the hills. And Vermentino is one of the specialty of Tuscany. Alright. Well, congratulations. Chinchin. Chinchin. And that's a wrap from Vinche. Where Leonardo Davinci was born. Okay. Thank you for joining us on another installment of On The Road Edition, hosted by Stevie Kim. Join her again next week for more interesting content in the Italian wine scene. You can also find us at Italian wine podcast dot com or wherever you get your pods, you can also check out our YouTube channel, mama jumbo shrimp to watch these interviews and the footage captured of each location.