Ep. 1616 Umberto Valle | Voices With Cynthia Chaplin

Since two thousand and seventeen, the Italian wine podcast has exploded, recently hitting six million listens, support us by buying a copy of Italian wine unplugged two point o or making a small donation. In return, we'll give you the chance to nominate a guest and even win lunch with Steven Kim and professor Atilio Shenza. Find out more at Italian One podcast dot com. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. I'm Cynthia Chaplin, and this is voices. Every Wednesday, I will be sharing conversations with international wine industry professionals. Discussing issues in diversity, equity, and inclusion through their personal experiences working in the field of wine. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and rate our show wherever you get your pods. Hello, and welcome to voices. This is today. I am very pleased to welcome umberto Vale to voices. Together with his brother, Bernardo, umberto is the owner of Poggio Trevali in Marima in Tuscany. And this year, they won best biodynamic red wine in the wine without wall selection, which we held here in verona the week before being Italy. So congratulations, Alberto, on your trophy, and thank you for coming today. Thank you. And thank you for inviting me, actually. Well, I wanna talk about your background and and the wine and the vineyard. I know that you started your vineyard Poggio Trevali in Tuscany in nineteen ninety eight, but really you're from Pulia. Actually, my file is is from Naples. Oh, wow. We had a family farm in Twilio, and that's where my brother and I learned how to how to farm, actually. So what made you to ask me? It's a long story. It it all dates back to the mid eighties, early nineties. With the European Union opening up to the Eastern countries, being the European farming economy heavily dependent on the European subsidies together with my brother, we thought if the subsidies are inevitably going to go down per head. Sad but true. Well, I mean, it's it was inevitable. It was clear. And I think at that back in those days, it was also stated. So it was no major surprise. So together, we started to think, okay, if we wanna steal farm, we need to get into, a market which is not so heavily dependent on the subsidies. And the wine at that time was frankly the only one, which gave us the, let's say, the guarantees gave us the the the the chance to start a business completely free from the European legislation, the European subsidies. That's so interesting. My father-in-law has a sheep farm in the north of England And now, of course, after Brexit, they lost all of their subsidies as well. So I understand the problems it causes, but you're quite right. Wine didn't need that subsidy. And it still doesn't actually especially on Tuscany. Well, it Tuscany is a it's a it's a nice spot and it's a sort of a brand which helps the sales. It helps market wise. Marketing wise. Actually, we moved to Tuscany exactly for this reason. Together with friends who already first of all, my brother and I have a quite a big farm that only included. Simon farm was three three hundred and fifty hectares. Oh, wow. On which eighteen were vines. So we learned how to farm on a quite large scale. So the process of growing the grapes was nothing new to us. When it comes to the wine making, it was all completely new because we used to literally do the wine in the garage in the in the horse boxes. Yeah. It's true. So it was we used to have, we used to work with a guy from Van at all. An old man from Veneto was quite skilled in the wine making. It was very skilled in wine drinking. Yes, there are a lot of men in Veneto who are very skilled at wine drinking. Yeah. So it was it was kind of skilled in making wine, but it was nothing more, you know, that the the wine that couldn't last over a season. So from September, let's say it roughly made it past June for years. So you had to drink it all up quickly. Right. I'd never understood if that was the point of making the wine that way or it just happened to come out somewhere. They were not really good. But talking with friends who was we're at the time making wine in puglia. Everybody kind of suggested that, swissen. It you can make it, but you need to move on a really large scale. So it has to be a legal operation. If you wanna work in a smaller, market, if you wanna manage a small, farm, then you have to move either to Saskany or to get mold. Right. Being from Naples to get mold is too far away, marima was quite mad, but the sweet spot because it's so close to the seaside. And back in those days, it was like, a discovery for almost all the big names in the county area and the Bruno area. And so we kind of jumped on a wagon that was kind of rolling nicely smoothly and we were I don't know if skilled or lucky, but anyway, we moved to Tuscany in the mid nineties And then we finally bought the farm that we are managing now back in nineteen ninety eight. Yes. Well, it's such a good story of of deciding to go there. You went down from three hundred and fifty hectares to now you have thirteen, I believe. So a big change, but one of the interesting things about Poggio Trevali is that from the beginning, your goal was to produce wines in an artisanal way and really link them to the territory and respect the local traditions. You know, as you said, you didn't want to be a big commercial enterprise. So what made you want this sort of artisan, very hands on style of winemaking? Because it it was kind of a reaction to the size of the operation that we were managing fully We used to, basically, beside the vines, we used to supply the, nestle company with the vegetables meant for their frozen industry. Oh, wow. So we, we learned a lot about the farming and the the industry behind the the agricultural product. And we decided, listen, it's a it's not our world. If we want to do something which carries our name, we have to move in a different direction. Starting from nineteen eighty I think it was nineteen eighty nine or early nineties. Anyway, we converted parts of the farm to organic farming. So we were seeding and harvesting, doing wheat. Organically grown. So we started our experience with the organic farming quite early. I'm I'm talking about thirty glass years ago. When we moved to Tuscant, it was clear that as the wine to be to be a good wine doesn't really need high yields in the field. It was quite obvious that there was no need for chemical compounds to be used in the in the in the in the wine farming, in the wine farming. And so we decided straight away to to apply to the organic method. And then shortly after we got in touch with the and the swift from the organic to the biodynamic was almost natural. Yeah. It's it this is such a good thing happening for the environment too because, you know, using no chemical fertilizers, no chemical pesticides, no nothing artificial or synthetic, you know, ever gets to the grapes when you're working this way. So when you're doing your your cellar practice, your wine making, are you using sort of spontaneous fermentation, or are you using yeast directly from your vineyards. How are you rolling your organic side of things into the winemaking process? Okay. It's, this is could be a could be an interesting story. At the very beginning, we hired a consultant, and we were following quite a street protocol, which implied the use of sulfides, the use of selected yeasts, and on and on and on. So the first harvest was has been the the nineteen ninety eight. And first one on the market was nineteen ninety nine. Then in two thousand and three, the summer of two thousand and three was one of the hottest on record. I remember very well. It was really boiling hot. What happened was that we had one nectar of Merrul, which we planted in the year two thousand. So it was a very young plant. No irrigation system, really hot. And when it came to August the tenth, it was almost the eighth. Actually. Together with my brother, we said, listen, it's either we harvest or we lose the break. What are we gonna do? The problem being that all of the suppliers of the inological products, the technological support things like yeast, sulfide, and all this kind of stuff, we're closed. So we said, okay. Well, how how can we ferment the wine without the grapes without yeast? And we said, well, Victoria was the name of the Benite guy. Never used anything. Let's do his way and see what happens. And so everything went well, actually. We used a we paid a little bit more attention. We by by then, we know we knew a little bit more. Well, we knew quite a lot more about the wine making procedures process and the knowledge of wine making. And so the Merlo came out not a super wine. It was a young wine. It was really hot but the wine came out well. And so we start questioning ourselves. Why should do we really want to buy yeasts? Do we really want to buy nutrients for the yeasts and on and on and on? And so we're starting to think, well, Let's make it up another try, and we did the same try with the sons of Esilat, same vintage. And starting from the year after, we never bought yeast anymore just because the we realized that the board that we're not needed. As not using yeasts, actually, you don't really need to use anything. You you have to pay a lot of attention to I don't know how much you want me to get into the parameters of the wine making in the in in the spontaneous fermentation could be boring. A lot of a lot of people who listen are are very wine nerdy, but I think we can leave it at spontaneous fermentation because everybody knows what that means. But You're also using cement for, you know, cement tanks for your wine. Why did you choose cement? Well, basically cement is, almost all the wineries in Marima in Tuscany. I would say in Tuscany were built around concrete vats. Now the the big difference between concrete vats and stainless steel tanks is how easily you can sanitize the steel versus the cement. Exactly. So, but on the other hand, the steel is so thin. The wall of of, stainless steel tanker is so thin that the wine inside is really exposed to the difference in temperature. So you need to either you control the the temperature of the vat or you need to control the temperature of the all winery. Cement as the the each concrete vat as well so thick that before the wine actually fills the difference in temperature, it takes a really long time. So at the end of the fermentation, for instance, the wine stays warm and that help the the malaratic fermentation to happen spontaneously, you don't have to worry about that. So in the end, what we do is for most of the wine, we ferment in stainless steel tank and then refine and age the wine in concrete. When I make the capo jore, when I make the the wine which start from, whole clustered or mostly whole clustered, then I use completely open concrete mats. And the reason for that is because it's there's so much more easy to to maintain to keep and to load and unload rather than a wooden one. The steel again wouldn't wouldn't make any sense. Well, let's talk about this wine. This is the wine that won the trophy. It was toscana E GT Sanjuvezi Vino Biological Capo Coori two thousand and twenty one. So tell me about this wine. It's a hundred percent Sanjuvezi. Is it a single vineyard? No. No. No. No. What happens is that, okay, We usually harvest less than a hectare a day, which is about six thousand kilograms of grapes per day. What we do is we have an early harvest so that the signs of acid that comes in the winery is not too much sugary. So it won't become too alcoholic wine and as a good acidity, a good pH. The last time that we harvest is the opposite way around It has a lot of sugar, so it will develop a wine with a lot of alcohol and a slow pH. So these two extremes, we usually blend together these two extremes to have a better balance. Until getting that we harvest Right at the proper time, at the right time, which happens to be in between these two extremes. It's usually the best one. And we we usually fill four or eight concrete vats. With the grapes that harvest within that week, about it's a week time more or less. And don't ask me the reason why, but one of those eight vats every single year comes out to be better than all the rest. Interesting. Yeah. There's no explanations. No. Actually, there's no really explanation. It must be something that has to do a lot with the chemical composition of the grapes, or as we like to play around us to do with the magic of the harvest. We we don't know. But what we know is that that wine becomes the cap of water and it don't it e everything every every means. It's almost pretty much the same. One bat outstands all the other. So we put it in a complete bath until February. February the wine is ready. And we bottle the wine, and we just leave the wine age in bottle. So that it's, there's no contact with. We try to have the the wine not in touch with wood, in touch with the concrete, the le the minimum amount of time possible. And so to have the fruit preserved as much as we can at least this is the idea behind the wine because the glass in the end is really neutral in terms of flavor that can, release or issue to the wine. So we think we think that once the wine is bottled, it's safe. It will age by itself. We will do its own stuff without any interference, without any internal interference. I didn't get to taste capicorti during five star. So tell me about it. If I had capicori in my glass right now, what what would I be tasting? What would I be smelling? What's the wine like? Well, it's cherry, basically. There's a lot of fruit. There's a lot of fruit coming up. And that's the first impact. Google Sandiovesi. Yeah. Right. Exactly. So the the fruit comes to your nose immediately. When you taste it, the fruit opens up to other, secondary tastes and flavors, so you can feel a little bit of spice. There's a lot of tannins as we use a lot of, whole cluster berry. But these tannins are bright around smooth. And so they kind of pave the palate, the tongue to the taste of the fruit and the taste of the spicy and the the spiciness that it comes with the with the sangiovese. It's quite long on the palate. I would say it's medium bodied. It's not really, you know, one of those punchy ones that hits you on the nose and stays with you for fifteen minutes. But it's a it's a length of a taste and palate and back in the nose which lasts enough to be enjoyed either by itself or during a meal, light meal, probably better than a heavy, juicy, fat roast, Well, it sounds delicious and beautiful. I'm gonna have to find some and give it a try myself. Before I let you go, I just wanted to ask you how you're doing this year. We've been having a very hard summer, terrible weather, and Paran Oscar and Pail and everything. How how is your vineyard? How is things in in Marima? Well, we we were lucky. We had Pail storm button at the very, very early in the season. So we had some damage, but nothing really serious. Until today, there's always a sense that through those breaks, through those scars, into the stem, into the into the same of the bunch is great, some disease can get to the very self. Hopefully not. Hopefully not. Perenospor has been a disaster. Perenospor has been a disaster. We were skilled and lucky, but for the first time in knees and knees and knees, I had to use copper, which I didn't use for over the past five years instead of copper using some clay, which contains some aluminum particles, particles. But this year was was it definitely a year of copper. Yeah. Terrible year. Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, you didn't you didn't lose too much production, but surrounding us all around us, the damage has been quite impressive, quite intense. Yeah. It it's gonna be a a difficult, I think, and a sad harvest for a lot of producers in Italy all around the country. So many problems. What do you think about, you know, climate change? Is this Is this something we're gonna have to learn how to deal with? Because these weather patterns are really strange, getting stranger, I suspect. What are you planning to do to sort of protect your vineyard from these problems in the future? Well, I've planted some new vines and I've started to use different rootstocks. Okay. I mean, I'm using the cecillium ones. Right. Yeah. Well, don't don't forget that we learn how to farm in puglia. Puglia is very it's south southeast, we were southeast, so the weather that the the heat waves that we are facing here in Marima today are exactly those that we were facing thirty years ago included. Somebody says that there's the it's like a desert wide which, moves toward north at about thirty kilometers per year. And I tend to believe that this is exactly what's happening. So what we're doing is we are getting back to what were our habits and our traditions. So using really more performing rootstocks, you prune the vines the same way, but then you manage to kind of eat a different way. You try to leave not too many leaves. You try to have the plant a little bit more compact. And then you have to get to be ready. You can't really rely on a pattern. This is what really makes farming nowadays challenging. There's no no longer, you know, you say, well, it's springtime. So it's it's gonna rain. Maybe you have such a dry spring, and then all of a sudden, at the beginning of the summer, it comes full in rain that lasts for weeks or months. So by by patterns, you have to deal vintas per vintas remote outcomes. I think that's so true. And I I'm very interested that you're using sicilian rootstock because, we work with professor atelios Chienza here. And he talks a lot about the fact that people growing vines are going to have to adapt and use new rootstocks and and think know, think a little bit more carefully about how they're organizing their vineyard. It sounds like your years in Poria really helped you be ahead of the game on that. So I'm happy to hear that your vineyard's doing well in Marima this year. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Well, and I'm I'm I have to say I'm really proud of having more than forecast. I foresee the incoming problems a couple of years ago. And so when was time to pick up the the the the rootstock going in a in a quite unusual direction. A lot of criticism. I got a lot of criticism, but I kept my idea. And I stood by that, and I'm today, I'm really happy with it. Well, it sounds like you're you're doing well. And as as we know, the wine was a winner, I love what you're doing in terms of being biodynamic and biological and being so careful with your land. So we hope you have lots more continued success and a good, vendemia this year. And, hopefully, I'll be able to come down and visit you one of these days. Thank you so much, Amber, for coming on the show. Thank you for inviting me, and you're more than welcome. Anytime you can, come and visit. Will be a pleasure. I will. I will. Alright. Have a good afternoon. Tow. Tow. Tow. Thank you for listening. And remember to tune in next Wednesday when I'll be chatting with another fascinating guest. Italian wine podcast is among the leading wine podcast in the world and the only one with a daily show tune in every day and discover all our different shows. You can find us at Italian wine podcast dot com, SoundCloud, Spotify, Himalaya, or wherever you get your pods.