Ep. 2306 Luca Ciotoli of Eroico Vino Winery in Cinqueterre | Wine, Food & Travel with Marc Millon

I've read in books that the grapes would be harvested in and passed down to boats to be taken to the towns. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. It's an incredible story, and, we need it also because, In the past, the vineyards from the Chincuaterre started from the sea level until, four, five hundred meters on the sea level. And the vineyards close to the sea, the most comfortable way to carry the grapes where, by boats. So the harvest was made, with the boat. If you do a boat tour of, the Chincuaterre, you can still see the little arbors along the coast where the people, were used to make the sea harvest. Fascinating people with stories to share, fabulous wines, and the best local foods to accompany them, and beautiful places to discover and visit. All of this and more on wine, food, and travel with me, Mark Millen, on the Italian wine podcast. Join me for a new episode every Tuesday. Welcome to wine, food, and travel with me, Mark Millen, Italian wine podcast. Today, we traveled to liguria to one of Italy's most beautiful small corners, the cinque terre, to meet my guest, Luca Chottoi of Eroicovino. Luca, I know you're immensely busy with outdoor work in restoring this amazing environment, and we're in fact, we at Italian wine Podcast are fortunate that today it's raining because that means you're able to join us. Welcome. And thank you so much for being our guest today. How are you? Thanks a lot, Mark. It's a pleasure being here, and, I'm fine. It's a really busy period, but, you know, usually for a winemaker, winter is, a little bit calmer, quieter period, but this winter for me was, pretty busy because, we are restoring, more than one actor of, old terraces in Bernaza. And, there are really steep places, really steep mountains, and the vineyards are, on the terraces. So when I bring the visitors in my, my vineyard, I joke with them and I told them that Machu Picchu is nothing, if you think through the cinque terra because we have a dry stone walls, everywhere in cinque terra. With Luca, just in case some of our listeners aren't familiar with cinque terra, can you tell us where cinque terre is located for those who've never been here. And just describe these beautiful five villages in this incredible environment. As you say, the village is located on incredibly steep hills and surrounded by these dry stone terraces, wall terraces that have been made over many centuries. Yeah. Chico Terre are a really unique place. We are, an UNESCO heritage due to our, amazing landscape. We are in the northwest part of Italy along the coast. It's a really, really thin coast, and, there are these steep mountains And immediately after there is, military agency, we are closed to Genoa. Genoa in the past, and also now, actually, was the main part of Italy. And, so Genoa traded a lot of, in the past, when it was, in the medieval time or when it was an independent state, traded a lot of, goods from, liguria, our region. One of the main goods, was the wine, and, their request for the cinque terre wine was, really, really high because, our landscape, our environment, it's unique because we are really close to the sea, and we are on a really steep mountains. So this means, a lot of wines, and not a lot of humidity, because, when it rains, the rain goes down, so the vineyards, are pretty dry and this great, unique, wise. So in the past, the request, for the cinque terre wine was really, really high. And so the cinque terre, there were more than one thousand and, six hundred hectares of the vineyards, and the olive tree is the fields. And think that now there are less than eighty hectares of the Vigner. So it's a huge, huge difference between, now and the past. And, the landscape, completely changed in the last seventy ERs because, you know, until the seventies, there were a lot of vineyard, yet, and there are some historical pictures of cinque terre, which are really impressive. But, you know, seventy years ago, after the second order, originally, there was, negotiation, economic boom, and cultivating the vineyards was really, really hard because, we can't use any kind of machine, any kind of, industrial work because, everything is manual in the cinque terre. The only exception is, little train, which can reach the vineyard, and it's really important for the harvest. But, besides the monorail, we cultivate, like, five hundred years ago, just a really few innovations here in the Chincuatera. And, you know, seventy years ago, nobody care, about the good wine in Italy. Everybody care about the the cheap wine because the way to drink was, completely different. In Italy, we were used to drink much, much more than now because wine was, something to drink, every day. With this request, making wine in Chincatara wasn't, sustainable because, making wine in Chincatara is more expensive. And sixteen hundred hectares of vineyards seventy years ago, and now only eighty. And these dry stone terraces, the walls, the stone walls that have been made over centuries, and maybe a thousand years or more going back as you say, to the middle ages when the Republic of Geneva was a major maritime trading with wines from the cinque terre, and now that great historic patrimony is in danger of being lost completely And this is why you are working so hard. Why you're able to be with us today because it's raining because otherwise you'd be out in the terraces helping to restore them. Now, Luca, I wanna know a little bit about you and your family. You're from Chinque terre. Your family have been working the land for generations. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. It is right, but, the story is a little bit more complicated because actually, My great grandfather was, a farmer, but also a trader. It traded a lot of, wine from cinque terre. And so my family in Bernaza, everybody were really, really poor. And also my family, but, my great grandfather was able to make my grandfather study. So my grandfather was the first engineer in Bernaza, And so, my grandfather had, a good job in the sixties and in the seventies, and he was an engineer, but he loved his, town and, cinque terre. So he kept the the vineyard also with, his job. So when a lot of people left the land, my grandfather maintain our family vineyard, a pretty small vineyard, but in Chincatare, all the vineyards are really small. But our vineyard survived. So the vineyard arrived, until my parents, and, My dad is a fisherman, and, he had the dream. So the dream was serving his fish and his wine in his restaurant. So we have, this beautiful restaurant in Casestry Lavante, which is, close to Bernaza. So make that on my mama, amplified at the vineyard to make the wine for the restaurant. And this vineyard, arrived, to me. And, actually, when I was a teenager, it didn't like so much, to go to the vineyard because it was we didn't understand why to go there. Then the things changed. So I did my experience. I took a PhD in a digital humanities. So I studied a lot. I did a little bit of, a university career. But, with COVID, and, actually, a little bit before, I understood that having a vineyard in the cinque terre is amazing. So it's hard. It's a really tough challenge. But, I work in the most beautiful office possible, you know. And so I took the vineyard, and my dream, I love history, and my dream was, bring back a little bit of, chiquita, history, Chiquita, recultural, heritage. And so I started this project, of, restoration of, all vineyards. Were your family waddling and selling wine before you became involved? Basically only for the restaurant, and the people who loves, eroica. So the customers, loves, eroica, but we sell only directly the wire to the customers because of, you know, the production is really, really small. We produce a little bit more than three thousand bottles. It's almost a joke because if you think to the wineries in, I don't know, to ask any or, like, or in the main wine making parts of Italy. It's it's a joke, but all the production in cinque terre are really, really small. So except for one or two wineries, the average of making wine is five thousand, six thousand bottles. So it's, all the production here are really small. We're we're really talking about a very, very limited production, but to make those three thousand bottles you require it requires an immense amount of manual labor. As you say, no mechanization, except for this trainino that helps Exactly. Move tools or grapes at harvest time. You We're talking about heroic wine. What does heroic wine mean to you? It's a really nice question. Eroico means, a particular history. Something, different. And, Erykom is heroic. And, of course, we don't feel heroes. I mean, we don't feel, like, Superman, but, what do we do? It's it's a brave story. I mean, we don't make, wine just for money because, it's really expensive, EER, and, making wine just, for the money, it will be no sense in the Chinca data. So something besides the economic aspect. And, heroic means, for me, bring back, the past and, preserve a unique cultural landscape. And, all the Chincweta farmers are really, really brave to take care of our land and preserve our history. So it's, pretty hard to explain. You can understand the only few pieces to Chincweta and, seeing, our landscape and our unique vineyards because it's, really, really special place. I think it's important for listeners to understand that this is truly heroic. You are heroes because the number of man hours required or human hours required to tend a vineyard in Chinguitata compared to a vineyard in easier terrain that can be mechanized, the difference is extreme. I don't know how many hours per hectare you would be putting in over the course of a year, but it would be many, many times more than wine growers elsewhere. And I guess for this reason, Luca, the vineyards were abandoned. As you say, the wines couldn't be sold at high price and people were finding in the economic boom of moving to factories, moving out of these areas, and these historic vineyards had just were falling into decay. So your restoration of them is truly heroic because you're not just restoring the land. You're restoring and maintaining a way of life. And it's it's a wonderful story. A wonderful story too that your father is a fisherman, and wanted to serve his own wine in your own restaurant. And we'll talk about food and about the restaurant a little bit further, but I think that, you're obviously a family of strong dreams and intentions, but I guess for somebody who's young to make that decision to return to the land must have been a difficult one. Are other young people returning to the land? Young people in the area in my region is a really, really rare thing because, legura is the oldest region in Italy, and Italy is the oldest country in Europe. So not many young people around here, but, the people from here, yeah, you know, there is a cultural change in the, I think, in all of Italy, but also in all of Europe, because, in the past, the cool thing, the cool thing to eat, the cool food, there was, the industrial food. So fast food, and, in Italy, there was cement out. So the meter in the can, but it was the top of the top, because they represented the the new way of flight. Now the young people, and I hope everybody are understanding that, that way of life, the way of life of, the economic move wasn't sustainable. And so the people are coming back to the land, to the typical product because, Italy is an amazing country because, any town, any region is different. And so in Chincuatera, you drink and you eat something completely different from, Florence, but also from Visa, which are towns pretty close because they are just the one, two hours by car from cinque terre. And so, yeah, the people are, and also the young people are coming back to the land. In cinque terre, we are twenty six, twenty eight producer. And, several of us are, pretty young. So are less than thirty five years. So, yeah, it's nice. We are, a good community, I think. And, it's a really nice, facing the same, challenges to be under. Well, tell us about some of those challenges, Luca. You said that if it wasn't raining today, you were having materials delivered. You were restoring this one hectare. Materials have to be delivered by helicopter. Tell us a little bit. Just give us a brief glimpse into what you're doing. Yeah. You know, the only way to reach the vineyard is, by hiking. My vineyard is far one kilometer from, Vernaza, and Bernatra is on the sea level. Why my vineyard is between one hundred and twenty meters on the sea level at the two hundred meters. So it's a pretty steep, hiking. The trainingo. So the monorail, but the trainingo can carry maximum, four hundred kilos. And, it's not so large training, not a lot of space. So now we are restoring, the dry stone walls, and, we are creating the new lines for the vineyard. And so we have to carry the supplies on the vineyard. And so the only way is, the helicopter And, it's expensive, of course, because the helicopter cost thirty euros, per minute. So when the helicopter arrived, yeah, I always with my watch to look, the helicopter protect helicopter. Luckily, helicopter is pretty fast. So in, last year, we restored one hundred and twenty meters square of dry stone walls. For each meter square, we had to use one ton of stone. One ton of stones is, one helicopter journey. So a lot of work and a lot of money, of course, but the helicopter journey likely is just one minute and a half or two minutes. So it's pretty fast. But, yes, it's the only way. And, Sure. I think that's just giving an idea of to listeners of the extreme conditions that make the heroic Viticulture and the tingue tata. The fact that It is so steep that you need to use helicopters and trainee need to move things around. I mean, two hundred meter climb from Vernaught's side is a very steep climb, and I imagine if you're carrying tools and equipment, it's really fatiguing. Let's talk about the wine itself, Luca. What grape varieties do you cultivate? We cultivate the typical varieties from Chincuatera. The main one is Bosco. Bosco is a grape that you can find. Only in cinque terre, and it's used both for the dry wine and for the sweet wine, and the family was, Shaquetra. Shaquetra is an amazing wine because it's, sweet, but also, salt. Maybe we'll talk about that later, but both great is the main grape for the Chakra. Then we have, albarola, which is another typical grape of, Chinquetera, and, Vermentino. All these free grapes are white, white grapes because the cinquetera, historically, is a place for the white grapes. And now in the restoration, we are planting, again, which is an ancient variety of, grape. So we are discover again, the old vines. And so, yeah, we have, these main, for different kind of, graves. Okay. And in fact, Vermentino is probably the only one that our listeners may have heard of which goes beyond outside of liguria, whereas Bosco, Alberola, and processes, I think, are very typical, just only found in liguria. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So you can find alvaro in all of, liguria. While Bosco, you can find only in So it's a really tiny, tiny place because Chincuatera, it's something like thirty kilometers long. So it's a really, really small, place. But it's really typical and, It's the best to make, which is the symbol of, cinque terre wine making culture. Okay. Well, let's talk about then about the culture of wine and the culture of wine and food in cinque terre. Your father's dream was as a fisherman was to to serve the fish he caught with the wines he made in your own restaurant. And that's actually a reality. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's reality. And, What what is the name of the restaurant? Eighty twoismo, bistro, eighty twoismo is like, agree toismo, but, of the sea. So, agree toismo is the house of the farmer. Eighty twoismo is the house of the fishermen. So in our restaurant, you can find our wine and our fish. Wonderful. Tell us a little bit about the foods, the typical dishes that one would eat in your restaurant and describe your wine because this white cinque terre is, I imagine, this is a perfect wine to enjoy with the seafood of cinque terre. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Seafood and, you know, liguria and cinque terre, and I really fresh cuisine and cuisine that I love because it's really light, but also with a lot of flavors. So, of course, one of the most famous, plate in the world is pastel pesto, and pesto is typical, from, our area. But about food, the king, actually, the queen of our cuisine is, anchovies, And I know that for the North Italian people, for the foreign people, anchovies can be strange because, you are used to eat just a salty anchovies, but, actually, in, nigoria and in and Chovies are cooking in a lot of different ways. For example, in Bernaza, there is one of the most famous dish, which is, the game is a pen And in this pan, you put a lawyer of potatoes, a lawyer of anchovies, and a lawyer of, tomatoes with, olives, peppers, and, oregano, And this great, a sort of lasagna, it's a seafood, lasagna with potatoes, tomatoes, and chorizo. And it's a great, a great dish, really fresh, perfect, during the summer. And the connection, with the wine is perfect because the cinque terra wine is really salty. It's really fresh and also fruity. So it's a perfect combination for, Summer night, San Bernardino. And, yeah, I think it's one of the best. Is that served in your family restaurant? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The reason my family restaurant, and, then, you know, In my family restaurant, the cuisine, is really, really simple because the fish, is really fresh. And so we wanted to serve the good fish, you know, so if the fish is good, you don't need a lot of cook. So you just need, a great olive oil from, our reels, and great fishing, great wine. Cooked ala. Yeah. But also in the oven and, There is a really traditional, thing. Every way to cook was a laquipassa, which means, the crazy water. Now we don't do anymore because it's forbidden. But at home, we are going on to cook, because the way to cook this fish was in the oven. And when my father, cooked the fish, he took also a little bit of, seawater from the same place, and he used this water to cook the fish in the oven. So this was the crazy water, and it was a really nice, nice way to make the fish. I've heard of that, but it makes sense the fishermen would cook it in seawater. Just a question about boats and wine. I've read in books. Maybe it was in the past that sometimes the, you know, the the vineyards are so steep that the grapes would be harvested and and passed down to boats to be taken to the towns. Was that ever done or And would your father have remembered that time? Yeah. Yeah. It's true. It's an incredible story, and, we did it also. Because, in the past, the Venus from the Chincuatera started from the seal level, until, four, five hundred meters on the sea level. And the vineyards close to the sea may be far from the downs, the most comfortable way to carry the grapes who were, by boats. So the harvest was, made, with the boats and with the fishing boats. And there was, also, this story is something critical of the Chincotada. And if you do, both tour of, the Chincuaterre, you can still see the little arbors along the coast where the people were using to make the CR bus. And so it it's something unique. And, one year, because our binary is it's not in Bernaza, but it's in Sestri Lavante, a town, along the coast. And so when we are doing the Shaquetra Arvest, so this week to wine harvest, My dad arrived, from the sea by his boat, and we carry the grapes from the boat. And it was, really, really cool. And, I have still some video on my Instagram account was, a really nice, way to our best. Oh, that's a beautiful story. That's a good time now to talk about this unique wine, Shaquetra. Tell us about Shaquetra. Shakra? Yeah. It's unique because as I told you, making wine in the Chincatara is really hard, but making Shaquatara is even more harder because, when you harvest, you can decide if you make three, four bottles of wine for making one bottle of shaketra because, shaketra is a sweet wine. So we are best, two weeks before, the dried wine are best. And we make dry the the grapes until, November. And, so the grapes lost the the water, and the inter remains in the grapes of the flavors and the salty. Are they laid out on racks, Luca? Yeah. Exactly. Or racks, or we also use it at the chains, and we attack the grapes to the chains. So in both ways, it's an amazing wine because it's sweet, but also salty and fresh. So and with a really great body because, you know, sometimes when you drink sweet wines, business sweet wines can be bore a little bit after one or two classes. But Shaqueta, you couldn't drink all the night. And, it, a great body. And so it's also the food that which the Chakra is, the combination can be really interesting because Chakra works also just drinking. So just a meditation wine. You can use with, some sweet dish, but with a good body, so some bean sweets, so on, but also a really nice combination making by some great souvenir is with, gorgonzola because gorgonzola is, pickante. I don't know pickante. Yes. Yeah. The salty one. Yeah. And so the combination between, gorgonzola, of which is great. And, Well, that does sound amazing. Yeah. The problem is that the production of white wine in Chiquatara is really small and the the production of Chiquat rice, even smaller. So my family produce, one hundred bottles of Shaketra. So, basically, nothing is just for, the tradition. But, my plan is to amplify the production of because the business wheat wine is really unique. Yes. Absolutely. It's a real extraordinary rarity. And if anyone has the opportunity to taste it, probably only if visiting Chinque terre than do. Exactly. Exactly. I hope our listeners do. Now speaking of visitors, Chinque terre attracts two and a half, three, maybe more million people every year. It's hugely popular. But you're involved with a project that is offering tourism of a of a different kind, a a chance to really experience the life that you've been describing. Can you tell us about, and what this is? Yeah. Sure. The project. I like to say that the tourism is, really important for the restoration of the landscape. It's true, but in Chiqueter, a kind of tourism create a problem. So the crew is maybe it's a really huge impact on the towns, but the tourists that are really important, to restore the landscaping because without the tourists, without the visitors, the demand of the Chinguatara wine, we wouldn't be so high. And so thanks to the tourism, we are able to amplify the vineyard also to the wine tourism. It's a really good way to go faster in the restoration project. And Vier Oiko is a project made with, really dear friend of mine, a cattle. And, the goal of the project, they're using the revenues from the touristic apartments, to the restoration of the dry stone walls. For now, we just launched this project, the one month, ago, but, the project is to amplify also to other binaries and other touristic apartments and so on. Because, in my experience, I saw that a lot of tourists, a lot of visitors wanna understand what are the cinquetera? What is the cinquetera history? They really want to contribute to the cinquetera history and preservation. And so the idea of Bier Oiko is using the part of the revenues from a touristic apartment to restore the dry stone walls and share this project with all of the visitors and all of the tourists who will come, in our apartments. And, yeah, we are really excited because this year, we will try for the first time our apartments. We will use, the main family house, carol's, rooms, and So we will see we will see how it will go. Marka will wait, in our apartments. Yeah. Well, I'm very much would like to do that, Luca. I was looking into I I just want our listeners to know, you could fly to somewhere like Pisa, take the train to, is it Las Petia and then the train to Verinaza, and be in this magical world, and not in a hotel, but really feeling that you're living and being part of a unique environment and a unique place that's like nowhere else on earth. And at the same time helping in the regeneration, if some of the guests wanted to actually help and work with you, can they do that? Is that part of the idea? It will be the next step. And, we would like to create a volunteer system, camp, especially during the winter season or the autumn season. Because, you know, maybe in England or in the North Europe, winter, you not so good, but here, the winter is amazing. If you are lucky, you have a great, days. A great weather. And so making this volunteer resume camp, yeah, it will be amazing. And, so, yeah, we are really busy, but, so we weren't, ready yet to to do the volunteering this year, but the project is for the next week, or because, You know, I have, already done some volunteer reasons project, and it was, really, really nice for me seeing the people, living in the, in the city, it's in the big cities of, Italy working in the Chingueta fields because, the farmer's, working is amazing, especially in our plates, because it's, as I told you, it's, the best office in the ward and taking care of, this office, this place is, it's really nice and we love to share this opportunity with, other people from all of the world. Well, it's a wonderful opportunity. I think it's wonderful of what you're doing. It is heroic in every sense the amount of effort to restore small bits of this huge patrimony of dry stone walls and restore landscape, but it's more than just wine. It's really about maintaining a way of life in an environment. And I think that for our listeners to have the chance to visit cinque terre and experience the way people really live through staying in one of the apartments through finding your parents' restaurant and trying the real foods, the fish caught fresh from the fishing boats and paired with this wonderful wine, this wine that's dry, but as you say has a stupidity and, salinity to it because perfectly in harmony with the food is, to me, one of the best ways to experience wine, food, and place. Luke, I really admire what you're doing. I very much want to visit you, and we'll try to find a way. But I wanna thank you for taking the time out from your busy day. Thankfully, it was raining today, so you could join us and share this story because it's an important one. And I hope to meet you soon. It was, really a pleasure talking with you, and I really glad that you appreciate cinque terre wine making culture. Really, we look for you. We we will wait for you here in the cinque terre to drink and, eat a great wine and food. Wonderful. I can't wait. We hope today's episode of wine food and travel with me, Mark Milin, on the Italian wine podcast has transported you to somewhere special. Please remember to like, share, and subscribe, wherever you get your pods. Likewise, you can visit us at Italian wine podcast dot com. Until next time, Chincin.