Vittorio Graziano

The Mecca for those who love real Lambrusco is here.

His family has always owned vineyards in the country but his father did something else and Vittorio is said to have approached wine late, drinking more to impress his girlfriend than out of conviction. As a boy he set out on the path of administrative accountant, but his anxiety for freedom exploded in the late 1970s when his land experienced wine industrialization and we witness, here as elsewhere, the abandonment of the tradition of refermentation in the bottle. Traditionally dry wines become alluring and easy and fermentation in an autoclave is the new mantra. Without any enological notion or personal experience, but with great curiosity, Vittorio Graziano recovers and treasures the great knowledge of the local farmers. He learns their working methods, knows the varieties, understands where it is best to plant them. In 1978 he planted his first hectare, adding one after the other, only and strictly from mass selection up to the current size of 5 hectares for 6000 plants each. Still far from the alignment between conventional and natural (born today from the awareness of the damage caused by the industrialization of the world of wine), it produces as it knows how to do and as it was once done: without any recourse to chemistry in the vineyard, but only according to nature, balancing the vineyard with legumes and wild herbs in the name of biodiversity. But also by seeking complexity by planting more native vines (once they were planted mixed in the vineyards), of which today he is certain of Trebbiano, Lambrusco Grasparossa and Malbo Gentile. Don't ask him about others. Organic ante litteram abandons certification after about ten years, overburdened by bureaucracy and costs, but also leaves the denomination in disagreement with the new yields and varieties imposed by the specification. But he will never change his idea of ​​wine.

The grapes of his wines are de-stemmed, pressed and fermented in fiberglass containers. The wine is stripped with about 10 gr / l of residual sugar and bottled for fermentation in the bottle with its own yeasts which will lead to the formation of carbon dioxide thus making the wine sparkling.

Vittorio Graziano made his first harvest in 1982. After 35 years he is the symbol of the free craftsman who doesn't give a damn about fashions and trends and knows only one creed, that of his land and of the tradition that is its true wealth.