We Seri!
We Seri! seem like the title of a poem by Mayakovsky, but is the result of receiving an anonymous comment on my blog.
comment I decided to use as a starting point for this post along with two other "goodies": an article published in the local press and a few bottles of
"vin de garage" for sale in a shop selling fruit and vegetables in Ciro 'Marina, the label which reads (see photo):
Wine: Cirò
Red Varietal: Merlot .
So, comment, article and bottles make me think of sull'enologia Cirotano and my efforts against the proposed amendment to the specification that in addition to the wine Cirò Gaglioppo (the most common native vine in Calabria), thus allowing the use of varieties international (Merlot and Cabernet and Syrah in the near future, who knows?)
Okay you say, but the comment does it say?
Here, fully back to its original language:
I doubt that there is wine in that bottle Cirò derives precisely from gaglioppo alone. I think the architect friend Defranco now suddenly it has become as good Winemaker prestiggiatore securities fooled everyone with a wine that is not Cirò. Let's be serious about Cyrus because Cyrus is a good wine, I would say that Ciro is one of the best wines of Italy but that wine bottled by Defranco has the flavors and characteristics of the wine that the Architect Defranco says. Let's be serious! Now, beyond delusional statements about me,
- If someone (probably Cirò) said not to recognize scents and tastes in my Gaglioppo bottles;
- If you sell bottles (homemade of course) as Ciro Rosso Merlot
- If the President of the Consortium for the Protection of the wine Cirò states that changes to the disciplinary need "to legalize what was going on for 40 years" ;
I wonder
There is still a shared identity of Cirò? And if there is what?
And if not, why? And ultimately
Why do I still bother a tutta questa brava ggente , pretendendo di difendere l'identità del vino Cirò? Non ho risposte immediate a queste domande e mi piacerebbe avere un riscontro sia dai Cirotani che da osservatori esterni.
In questi mesi di continua discussione sulle possibili modifiche al disciplinare, mi sono fatto l'idea che noi Cirotani, e in generale noi calabresi, in fatto di enologia crediamo poco nella materia prima che abbiamo a disposizione, cioè una base ampelografica autoctona unica ed inimitabile e un territorio estremamente vocato per la viticoltura di qualità.
Da più parti vengono rilevati i possibili problemi che pone la vinificazione del Gaglioppo, ma non become serious considerations at work in the vineyard. Surely Gaglioppo is a difficult grape (like all the great varieties on the other hand), but we can not speak to the absolute level of the quality of this grape. The agronomic practices that favor the quantity, land is not suited as those in the valley, early harvest, leading to a sharp decline of several quality parameters. You can then produce the same territory, with potential oenological Gaglioppo vastly different. It seems like a trivial concept but it is not obvious.
In a recent article in www.Intravino.com (
laws qu i) Cossater James wonders why the Calabria wine is still misunderstood. He writes:
"... the impression is that it takes so little, that is in the cellar in the vineyards, to give us products that tell the most of this region, naturalistically wonderful." From my knowledge I can say that most of the companies has anything to consultants in the vineyard and winery and the technological point of view there is not super-equipped cellar.
Instead, it survives tenaciously cultural subordination that makes us feel inadequate and ready to accept a vision that we certainly other more "modern". A vision that brings us to waive the requirements of our identity grape wine considered more models to follow valid.
So unique and inimitable characters of Gaglioppo (not very intense color, flavor never exuberant, but fine tannins present) become a problem and everything is being done to eliminate them.
is a cultural rather than technical skills.
not true then that "would take very little" because, though technical deficiencies can be easily overcome with adequate investment in the economic, cultural changes are very, very slow.
With this speech I do not want to generalize, there are a Cirò business realities that are forward-looking variety of scientific research on the basis of their native market presence and future. In
recent years many growers have started making wine on his own, as a response to the crisis in the grape market, leading to the creation of new small and medium sized wineries. This may be a reason for hope.
New energies are expected to make new and different ideas, more confrontation, the possibility of products with more personality and more focus on territoriality. If so inevitably we will have, then, changes in the balance of stuffed Consortium.
The risk however is that the industrial model of oenology, so far mainly in Cirò, is also taken by these small companies. The results would be detrimental to the whole territory.
I think that small wine-growing areas such as Cirotano, should have a strong identity and conscious approach in order to produce wines of the territory and to avoid confusion in a market that is approved.
Luciano Pignataro writing Aglianico (
read here) says that we should go slower to produce quality. In my opinion, this concept also applies here to Cyrus
slow practice rather than chasing a market that requires more and faster new fashions and new models wine.
short,
We're Serious!
Francesco Maria De Franco