Winemaker: Daniele Piccinin
Country: Italy
Region: Veneto | Lessinia
In the hamlet of Muni in the Alpone Valley of the Venetian (Lessini) Prealps, Daniele Piccinin works 7 hectares of vines on chalky, calcareous soils 300 to 500 meters above sea level, with a south/south-eastern exposure.
Daniele left his career as a chef to study and make wine with Angiolino Maule in 2006. He made his first wines with Angiolino using purchased grapes before moving to nearby Muni in 2009 to make his first vintage.
Muni is situated just north of Soave and just east of Valpolicella. Here, Daniele devotes most of his energies to the cultivation of Durella. This is a native grape, named (according to one theory) for its acidity (“duro” meaning hard).
Durella grapes grown on these chalky soils—to an even greater extent than those on the volcanic soils elsewhere in Lessinia—produce wines with particularly high acidity and flavors of fresh green apples and citrus.
The terrain is steep and the work in the vineyard must be done manually; however, considering Daniele is the Vice President of VinNatur—an association that requires manual harvesting—the land is not the constraint, but the beneficiary. Through meticulous observation of his territory, Daniele has refined his practice so that a primary aim is the betterment of the entire ecological reality. “Wine production for its own sake,” he says, “is something that never interested us.” Rather, Daniele seeks to center the vineyard as a complex ecosystem through a careful and constant study of the plant and animal life that occurs there.
“I immediately adopted a natural approach to viticulture, motivated by the belief that the land of my ancestors was perfect for the type of project I had in mind, pushing me to bet on it.
In this view we allow everything to flower as much as possible which attracts wildlife, we try to create a habitat inside the vineyard favorable to life. If you think that in a living soil there are 35 quintals (3500 kg) of earthworms per hectare; sometimes this is more than the grape production itself. Imagine the work they can do together in just one night.
We are firmly convinced that to have a harmonious vineyard it is necessary to surpass the concept of monoculture as much as possible. In order to guarantee a certain biodiversity, since the beginning we have multiplied the Durella vine from a massale selection of an old vineyard.
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There are a thousand ways to transform this fruit into wine, we have chosen the more human path with the least intervention possible! We leave enough space in the winemaking process, so that variety and soil can be expressed in a defined way. We want the minerality to reflect the vitality of the soil, so that it can be found clearly in our wines.
I consider myself a lucky man as I am able to make a living doing what I love. Being able to transform passionately a bunch of grapes into wine is truly a gesture of love.”
