Luca Paschina, direttore di Barboursville Vineyards, la tenuta della famiglia Zonin in Virginia, racconta per la prima volta su Wine is love la sua vita a Barboursville (qui una piccola introduzione).

It can be complicated to write about twenty years of your life, especially if you try to be clever, funny or creative about it and then more likely you will be distorting it.

I believe instead in writing about it in a truthful way, as it naturally flows from my heart and memory.

I arrived in Virginia in the summer of 1990 with the mission of consulting the Zonin Family for a 3 month period. That particular harvest, my first here, coincidentally was recently described by the few seasoned local vintners as one of the worst in the past three decades.
I still concur that 1990 was a vintage to forget and yet back then I had a sense that Virginia and especially this site had a much greater potential that needed to be better understood, nurtured and brought to life.

It was during a beautiful mid October evening, on the eve of my return to Italy, that I clearly had a calling and a wish to return and implement the needed changes to allow this wine estate to shine with its true colors and potential.

Virginia intrigued me not just for the wine potential but as well for the richness of the landscape, amazing native brook trout fly-fishing stream, history and the kindness of the people.

I was painlessly hooked.

A few days later upon my return to Italy I spent an afternoon sharing my findings and suggestions with founder Gianni Zonin about the winemaking, and  grape growing tactics needed in Virginia.
This was a very important meeting because it allowed me to understand that he was the kind of person I would gladly work with, since his principles and goals were something my father would have shared and required from me as a young winemaker.  Furthermore meeting all of the many family members involved in the wine estate, Casa Vinicola Zonin, gave me a sense that I was not engaged and sent by only one man, instead by a whole family.

Shortly after that meeting I returned to Virginia and I recall spending almost the entire winter in the vineyards pruning the vines of Barboursville. It was very inspiring and gave me a time to process a lot of thoughts about my present and dreams about the future here in this new home called Virginia.

The plan laid out in Italy with Mr. Gianni Zonin required a drastic introduction of new techniques, yet inspired by tradition, of planting, spacing the vines, pruning, fertilization, defoliation, all of them so new to Virginia that we even received benevolent, yet negative criticism from some skeptical grape-growers.

Like a young and vigorous vine I was fully involved mentally and physically with all of the aspects of this vibrant activity, growing, fermenting, bottling, selling and promoting.

It was promoting and sharing the wine that gave me an opportunity to meet a lot of people, understand their taste for wine, meet with local chefs, and ultimately have the pleasure to meet Patricia, who later became my wonderful wife.

As the years and vintages followed with them arrived children, the first important national and international wine awards, the comforting and so enjoyable and frequent visits from my parents and the Zonin family and of course along came some challenges which were all overcome by using the increasing patience, wisdom and finding the right and skilled people to help for the growth of this place.

Still, the most important thing we had to create was the style of the wine and to express the flavor of this estate.

For the style, instead of growing what the market wanted to drink, we chose to plant several varietals of grapes and then allowed the land and the climate to shape them, and this is how we learned to concentrate mainly on pinot grigio, viognier, cabernet franc, nebbiolo and a Bordeaux blend Octagon.
The use of traditional wine practices was then simply applied resulting in wines that truly could shine with food at the table. Still today, at home with food or at our Palladio restaurant is where I can better understand the wines of Barboursville.

For the flavor of the estate we simply had to carefully build new structures that fit and respected the territory and the architectural tradition. Furthermore we carefully maintained the existing historic buildings on the estate and brought back to life the original and ancient gardens.
This has been the inspiring approach of the Zonin Family in shaping all of their nine wine estates for several decades in Italy, respect for the territory, local traditions and love for the land, the wine and culinary arts.

With the creation of our Palladio Restaurant and the reopening to guests of the historic Inn I truly believe that now anybody can come and essentially breathe, see, taste and feel the flavors, shapes, colors, sounds and emotions that this place is all about.

Thank you, to all of you who have been part of this twenty years, visitors, family, friends, colleagues.

You all have been and are part of this wonderful, still growing dream called life.

Tag: america, barboursville, Dalle nostre tenute, luca paschina, stati uniti, vino, virginia

Scritto da Luca Paschina il 01-02-2010 alle 10:26 am nella categoria Dalle nostre tenute, Ospiti. Puoi seguire la conversazione attraverso il RSS 2.0 feed. Puoi lasciarmi un commento, o un trackback dal tuo sito.