In my vineyard, I sow ancient seeds from Sicily. I delight in bringing to Le Boncie a part of a land that is close to my heart. But doing so is hard work! I can hear my heart pounding and think that using a seeding machine might make my life easier. Then I reconsider. How could I give up watching the seeds bouncing off the rocks? Being able to work this way is a luxury for me. I am comforted by doing things the way my ancestors did. I walk, I sow, and I am calmed.

Every time that I leave Le Boncie to participate in a natural wine event, I return full of ideas. I often come home furious and need to communicate, to vent and to confront myself with others…

I need to sow and then to share my experience with others. It is important not to loose our memories, even of recent history.

What follows is a brief history of Vini Veri.

At the beginning of the 2000s, Fabrizio Niccolaini began looking for wine producers who, like himself, considered themselves artisans. Some were already farming organically, others were on the road to doing so, but all of them had refused to comply with the industrial winemaking guidelines.

He met Stanko Radikon, Nico Bensa, Angiolino Maule, Dario Princic, Walter Mlecnik and Edi Kante, and began exchanging ideas with them. They decided to join forces and attend Vinitaly together. During one evening in Verona, they tasted a bottle of Coulée de Serrant, liked it, discovered who made it and learned that Nicolas Joly had founded a winemaking movement called Renaissance de Aoc with the goal of “providing consumers a guarantee that the wine in the bottle embodied a specific place, a specific terrior.” This guarantee derives from four elements:  heat, light, water and earth. The rules were documented and although you didn’t have to work biodynamically to be a part of the group, most of the members did.

In Italy, biodynamic agriculture is still in its infancy, a practice for the “newly-initiated.” Biodynamic agriculture is closely tied to anthroposophy, the philosophy founded during the early 20th century by Rudolf Steiner, which doesn’t have much to do with the vineyard, the wine and, especially, the winemakers.

In January 2003, Sandro Sangiorgi of Porthos magazine, invited Nicolas Joly to hold a seminar at the magazine’s offices. New contacts are made. I fondly remember those two days, a seed was sown…

Fabrizio, Angiolino and Stanko asked to be a part of Renaissance and they accepted, as Fabrizio describes it, “the opportunity.” It was an opportunity to align oneself with already well-known producers, to present one’s wines abroad and to gain credibility in a time when Italian wine was headed in another direction.

Renaissance organized their own stand at Vinexpo in Bordeaux, inviting producers from all over Europe to participate. Luca Gargano attended the tasting and took advantage of the “opportunity” by actively organizing a similar event in Italy.

Nicolas Joly suggested that an Italian association be created. In 2004, Vini Veri was born.

The founding members were Fabrizio, Stanko, Angiolino and Giampiero Bea. The group decided to hold their first tasting at Villa Favorita. Vini Veri began to grow. Fabrizio realized that in order to make the movement more powerful, they would have to invite producers from the renowned winemaking regions to participate. Baldo Cappellano and Beppe Rinaldi joined the group. The networked continued to expand casually to include Dario Princic, Nico Bensa, Walter Mlecnik, Stefano Bellotti, Alessandro Sgaravatti, Ezio Trinchero, Camillo Donati, Beniamino Zidarich, Marco and Eleonora Casolanetti, Paolo Vodopivec, and me. Each one of us had different reasons for joining, but we were all aware that we had something in common.

We all make wine naturally and decided that it was time to define and communicate what that means. So we wrote the “regula,” or regulations.

In 2004, we held our first group tasting at Villa Favorita. Despite the organizational difficulties and some disagreements between us, the event was a success.

At that time, our central goal was to make “healthy” wine in the vineyard and in the cellar, however we felt the need to further justify our decision to be a part of an association.

Joly was no longer convinced by organic-biodynamic approach of the Vini Veri producers and decided to created his own association in Italy, Renaissance de Aoc Italia, with the help of Bellotti.

Internal disputes, personality differences, and distinct goals lead Angiolino to leave the group and found VinNatur. Camillo followed him.

In brief, this is the real history of Vini Veri.

And now for the present.

We have tried multiple times to interact with other organizations. Years ago, we wrote the “carta dei sentimenti” with Renaissance in recognition of our common philosophy. It was a “testimony to the fact that the vitality of wine can’t be limited to categories like natural, organic or biodynamic; that the choices we made, all individually, were made with respect for the land, for others and for ourselves. They are the fruit of a visceral relationship with the earth. They are based on feeling more than schooling.” But who cares?

I continue to sow…rather, I feel responsible for having done so.

I think of Baldo, of the conversations we had about the useless definitions and the importance of the words “tradition” and “patrimony.” I turn to my etymological dictionary. Tradition comes from “trans-dare,” to take, to carry beyond. It refers to transmitting something in time, to handing it over, to passing it from one generation to the next. Patrimony comes from “pater,” the collection of goods that someone before us, for example our father, left for us. Something that becomes yours and, in turn, you leave behind in transmission (or tradition) for others.

It is the present that I have difficulty describing: before I can think about what I can leave behind, I must figure out what I have.

It is certain that we can only trans-dare substance, or that which is real.

Winemakers who are truly farmers are often closed and prefer to work in silence. Their silence contrasts drastically with all the gossip surrounding natural wine, the many forums, the trend itself, as well as the critiques of wine experts and of people who arrogantly rank wines based on personal opinion.

And the producers? What do they do? They make their own forums. And what do they want? “A table, please. I want a table and I want it here, and there, and possibly at Vinitaly.” Everyone wants to be present everywhere. Everything has become natural…”I am more natural than you, ethically cleaner and more of a real farmer.”

Nowadays, there is an obsessive need to be omnipresent and often ill-mannered conflicts between producers due to what tastings they decide to attend. There is no other real criticism going on.

Things are getting out of hand. Perhaps they are already gone too far.

The Vini Veri Consortium is responsible for safeguarding that seed, to protect it so that it can ripen into fruit and sprout again.