In constant evolution We were simply looking for an olive grove, we wanted to produce olive oil for us and for our friends according to our ideas, selecting the olive trees, harvesting the fruits of each cultivar at the beginning of veraison, crushing them immediately after harvesting and packaging the oil just separated from the lignin after a light filtration. This research led us to Suvereto, the last town in the province of Livorno before the Grosseto Maremma, and there we met a great master of Tuscan cuisine, Giancarlo Bini in his Ombrone restaurant or rather in his "Enoliteca" where he had first selected a great quantity of mono-cultivar olive oils that he offered to customers with his own oil list, when oil was still considered a simple and vile ingredient for cooking. It became clear from that meeting that our idea made sense and that those abandoned lands on the ridge above Suvereto in the locality of Belvedere could represent the most beautiful challenge to realize our project. And this is where our story is born. On that ridge, looking at the sea in the distance with Elba and Montecristo in front of your eyes, with the scents of the scrub in the air and without any sign of anthropic contamination as far as the view swept, you were sure that that place, abandoned by all due to the objective difficulties of survival, it would have been the place of choice for producing an excellent olive oil. From the threshing floor of the Merli, as the highest part of the ridge was called between the sea to the south and the metalliferous hills to the north, descending on the two sides, we have recovered the uncultivated land from the 1950s when mechanization agriculture privileged areas easier to work on the impervious hills of Suvereto and the inhabitants of the place abandoned them. We freed the olive trees, planted over the centuries by the 'Belvederini' with so much effort, from the Mediterranean scrub, which with vigor and arrogance imprisoned them as well as took over all the areas used for the necessary cultures for their survival. The idea, the project, the evolution and the people. Recover an abandoned territory, for reasons of non-competition according to the rules of maximum productivity at the lowest cost, through natural cultivation methods with their slowness and completeness, fertilizing the lands with green manures and microorganisms respecting the lunar and vegetative phases and then waiting patiently and pay attention to seasonal results to evaluate and test increasingly specific methods and processes to achieve excellence. Bound Then the wine. The cultivation of vines in Belvedere in the past was relegated to a few rows on the perimeter of the fields planted with wheat, just enough for the family's needs, and not always. The culture of wine in Belvedere had not developed both due to the difficulty in building systems on these steep hills which prevented the mechanization of processing, and due to the necessary effort and the related labor costs, if it could be found. The inhabitants of Belvedere had gone from about 1000 at the end of the 19th century to about ten in 2000 and therefore there were no specific interests in enhancing this area. But the biodiversity present in this part of the territory, the minerality of the soil, the intensity of the light, the coolness of summer nights made us imagine the possibility of developing a sui generis product, a wine that could express belonging to this territory. , with its aromas, minerality, body and elegance and for this we created the first vineyards, Sangiovese in 2003, Cabernet Sauvignon and Franc the following year. The results obtained, in terms of quality and characteristics of the first wines, bottled in 2010, encouraged us to continue and expand the vineyards by occupying all the land that it was possible to recover from the forest, the wild boars and the tenacity of the surrounding scrub. The preparation of the land to host the vineyards was laborious and complex due to the stonyness of the place, but the answer in the end was and is increasingly satisfying and generous, from 2011 to 2018 we planted another 5 hectares of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon and Franc , Vermentino and Aleatico from Elba depending on the affinity of the various cultivars to the land that hosts them. We have fenced off all the vineyards to defend them from the impetuousness of the wild boars, we have built a new underground cellar positioned above the vines where the wine rests and ages in large barrels and terracotta amphorae waiting for bottling, respecting cycles and phases of transformation without apply forced processes. But a project is born from an idea and is perfected with people. The history of the Almond trees does not arise from a family with agricultural origins handed down over time, but from a family with constant attention to respect for the land and its cultivation methods. It comes from a sensitivity towards a type of agriculture in general that has the task of protecting and safeguarding the territory, but it also comes from people who are still amazed by the vitality and strength that nature offers. Our wine represents an expression of the earth, of that specific territory with certain characteristics, becoming a link between the earth and man. Every person who has contributed to the growth of I Mandorli da Gigi, Andrea and then Maddalena, Costanza, Adil and also myself have not been and will never be simple operators, but artists who continuously shape their work in this agricultural forge. with respect for nature and the joy of seeing their work of art realized. Massimo Pasquetti