Shun Minowa
Our vineyards are located in Val Trebbia, Hemmingway defined it as "the most beautiful valley in the world", in the prefecture of Piacenza. This area has been recognised as a zone of great white wines made of Ortrugo grape, a local variety which exists just in this region.
The mission of our winery is to produce Ortrugo wines which express the voices pronounced silently by the whole ecosystem, respecting the interaction between the environment factors (climate, soil, etc) and the biological components (vines, native flora and fauna, microbiome under/on the ground, etc).
To reduce the ecological impact on some groups of species, we often have to minimize the agricultural interventions. Small quantity of sulfur and copper can be used to prevent the fungal disease. We cut the vegetation just once a year (or never) to grow the organic material layer on the soil surface. The use of tractor is normally avoided with aim of keeping the soil hardness lower, because the soil hardness could strongly affect the species composition of the native flora and the microbiome. To not intervent the underground ecosystem and the connecion between the vine roots and the microbiome network, we never plow our vineyards.
In the harvest, the grapes are selected manually in the field and also in the cellar. The fermentation starts spontaneously with different kinds of "non-Saccharomyces" yeasts and succesively the alcoolic fermentation takes place. If there's not strong sign of the reduction, basically we don't do punch down or pump over.
For the whole process SO2 is not applied. Solo uva, no más.