(18 Sep 2013) A bumper grape harvest is predicted for Italy’s wine makers this year.
The industry has been hit by the country’s economic crisis and hopes this year’s crop will be good for business at home and abroad.
STORYLINE:
Little has changed for 100 years in the way grapes are harvested in Torano Nuovo, a small town in the Abruzzo region of central Italy.
Here wine-making is an art, a passion; physically demanding but hugely rewarding.
Family-run company Emidio Pepe has been hand-picking grapes and crushing them by foot since the end of the 19th century.
The result is a high-quality product which has shielded the company from the effects of economic crisis affecting Italy and the wine market worldwide.
On these hillsides, enveloped by swinging vines heavy with ripe, fragrant grapes, it’s hard to believe that the Italians are buying far fewer bottles of wine.
Chris Leo is a 39 year old American who decided to take part in the annual grape harvest after tasting an Emidio Pepe wine in Los Angeles.
“In good times, bad times, everyone needs wine. In good times you can drink wine in an expensive restaurant, in bad times you can have an incredible dinner in your house with a bottle of a wine on the table,” he says. “I think there is always a need for wine.”
But over the last few years demand for wine within Italy has fallen dramatically.
According to Assoenologi, the country’s principle wine-growers association, Italians will have drunk 40 litres a head in 2013, compared to 45 litres in 2007 and 110 litres in the 1970s.
The solution for producers appears to be to focus not just on quality but on making their wines unique.
The Pepe family describes its wines as “bio-dynamic”.
Wines such as Pecorino, Trebbiano and Montepulcino, are, it claims, “alive”, because they are treated and respected like living creatures.
Weed-killers are out, as are yeasts which interfere with the natural fermentation process, and filters or purifiers are banned.
Emidio Pepe owns the company and has dedicated himself to carrying on the traditions laid down by his grandfather, whose name he shares.
“In America, American critics have written that I produce one of the best red wines in the world, it makes me explode with joy!” he says.
The wine is decanted before being bottled by hand and stored in a dark and silent cellar.
Forty five per cent of the wine produced by Emidio Pepe is exported all over the world including China, Japan, Australia, America, Canada and northern Europe.
Sofia Pepe is in charge of production and sales.
“The export market is definitely stronger right now because Italy is feeling the economic crisis at home,” she says . “We’re lucky because
recently people have been re-discovering unadulterated wines, genuine wines, so we’ve not really been affected by the crisis.”
While Italian wine may be disappearing from Italian homes, it is turning up on the dinner tables of its European neighbours and elsewhere.
According to Assoenologi, sales of Italian wine were up 10 percent in the first quarter of 2013.
Caviro based in Forl�, in the Emilia-Romagna region is one of the larger wine making companies in Italy.
It is focusing increasingly on the export market and currently sells to around 40 countries.
Very different from family run companies such as Emidio Pepe, Caviro has 41 cellars and over 20,000 wine-growers who work for it across Italy.
It is famous for its Tavernello wine, the first in Italy to be packaged in Tetra Pak cartons.
Giordano Zinzani, Caviro’s wine director, says the economic crisis means consumers are looking for even cheaper deals.
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