There’ll be a snowy photo of the vines in winter, or merry harvesters throwing their baskets in the air, with a scrawled signature. Occasionally I’m sent a list of wines with all the scores obtained in the previous year, like a wonk’s school report; or I get a request for a date – at one of the wine fairs the owners will soon attend. I glance, note… recycle.
And then out tumbled this: ‘What I Believe: Welcome to the corner of my consciousness.’ I unfolded the brightly coloured A2 sheet. On it, there were 10 points, beginning with ‘Enthusiasm’ (great!) and ending with ‘You are what you think, feel and do’ (true).
The sheet came from Enrico Rivetto, pictured wearing a fool’s cap from which a bunch of grapes dangled. He’s a fourth-generation Barolo producer with vineyards in Serralunga, the DOCG’s most desirable commune, though point eight stressed that ‘Vineyards are not owned but kept’. He makes lovely wines (I mentioned one with my February column): I’m sure he received a shaking of decent scores last year. But point five was ‘Less competition, more comprehension’, so he’s clearly not a scores guy. ‘I learned to unlearn’ sounded promising; ‘One in all, all in one’ needed further investigation. ‘Monoculture: what a bore’: that’s an intriguing tack for a wine-grower to take. ‘Plants speak,’ he believes, with King Charles III. I’m wholly in favour of ‘Imagine to create’. And wine itself? ‘It’s a kind of magic’, he says in point nine. ‘A sweet spell that … “uncorks people” and prepares them to listen’.
This I didn’t recycle; I hooked up with him on Teams instead.
I discovered a committed and passionate dissenter. ‘Wine is not the goal, but a tool to do something,’ he told me. ‘Piedmont is a conservative area, very closed. People revere you because you’re a “Barolo producer”. Many growers just think about making a great wine, making more money. This isn’t good for me. Why do we make wine? We could do other things. Why are we doing this? Many wine-growers don’t know how to answer that question, though it touches the soul.’
His answer? ‘Listen to the best teacher in the world: nature.’ He’s trying to turn his estate not into a million-euro business or a ‘fine-wine destination’ but ‘a place of beauty, a place to produce happiness’. So – after looking at himself squarely in the mirror, and asking ‘Are you really going to tear up Nebbiolo to plant rosehips?’ – he did indeed uproot some of his vine rows in order to create biodiverse hedge corridors, and slowly returned the estate to being a mixed-use farm which also produces spelt and other ancient grains, vegetables, fresh fruit for jams and juices, and medicinal herbs for essential oils. ‘The more I built this new system, the more people came and knocked at my door: a bee-keeper, a truffle farmer. Now we have a home-schooling project: we have 24 children coming here every day. Non-profit, to help parents transfer their skills to their children in a natural environment. To play the guitar, to prune a vine, to do things with energy and enthusiasm.’
It hasn’t all gone to plan, of course. ‘Nature is a perfect system, but in nature there is everything, good and evil, all in balance. It’s difficult to accept this, but everything is part of that one system, from bread yeast to star dust. Including the things we don’t like – perhaps they’re a stimulation to do better. I planted 1,000 trees; 20% died. I learned that nothing grows around a walnut tree. I used amphorae, terracotta; I made mistakes. When you do something new, it’s normal to make mistakes.’
Enrico’s lesson, though, for those who feel that ‘business as usual’ in the wine world is a misguided or troubled pursuit is ‘do something’.
‘It’s not enough just to talk in the bar or online,’ he says. ‘Don’t just protest, get angry, make a noise. You have an internal power – it’s called enthusiasm. You have to be the protagonist of your micro-world. Do something.’
In my glass this month
Just back from a day at Montpellier’s Millésime Bio trade fair, where I caught up with Hildegard Horat, another dissenter, of the admirable La Grange de Quatre Sous in Languedoc. I’ve always admired her wonderful Cabernet-based Lo Molin (we tried the still-young 2016) but had forgotten how good the white Bu N’Daw is: pure Petite Arvine (Hildegard is Swiss). Aged in earthenware, the 2023 is saline, sappy and fresh, its flavours a gentle résumé of celery and angelica – fine organic Languedoc white wine.
