Le Temp

I have always found time an extremely fascinating concept. After such an unfortunate year, I was amazed to see how its perception and value are extremely relative and mostly the result of the context in which it is spent. We saw the world stop, the pace drop and the time we had expand remarkably, leaving an amazing new space of thought in the holes usually filled by the daily frenzy. I like to think that this was the year we didn’t lost, but regained our time, although I have the feeling that at the first upcoming Vinitaly we will all be back to run - including me - and maybe even faster than before… In the meantime, however, I am basking in the idea of having given meaning to time, finding answers in these silences. One of the most significant answers came as I wrote these lines, during a great conversation with the most experienced Aosta Valley viticulture researcher, Rudy Sandi. I always had the impression that Aosta Valley lacked a leading grape or wine that would represent us in the world, and while tasting together with Rudy, a new and different concept of identity has shown up: Aosta Valley will never be represented by a single wine, but by a taste, in other words by the deep terroir imprint given to each grape. This varietal heterogeneity is part of our history and it is also what we are today.

Nowadays stories are easily invented, making us the perfect subjects of an ever more advanced but emptier communication. Communicating wine therefore means resisting, keeping the value of the content high and real. This vision is now making its way into us, giving us strength and motivation to face the new year.

Last year, shortening distances was our first priority. As you already know, unlike many other industries, agriculture just kept going. We found ourselves taking care of the relentless cycle of nature in a world that seemed to have stopped. A definitely curious perspective… So the 2020 vintage has been brought to completion and, looking back, we are so proud to say that we will not only remember this year for the pandemic, but also for the great quality of the wines we made.

We used the time we were granted to look deeper into ourselves and into our wines. The field of production is certainly the one where the producer is most involved, yet looking at the amazed glance of those who taste our wines for the first time is always an emotion beyond words. Because wine is just like music, if no one sings your songs you will never be remembered. Looking in your eyes and having a talk with you is what we missed the most. So we tried to enclose all our enthusiasm in telling you about every single wine in this document, to get to you with a glass and having, somehow, a toast together.

Anyway, looking at the future, there are far too many uncertainties, but we would like to grant you some certainty.We are definitely releasing in September a wine we have been talking about for years now and it is finally time to taste. We are talking about Clairet: a historical wine of our region, based on Nebbiolo, whose memory was lost over the centuries. An amazing story we can’t wait to tell you. Then the new 2018 vintage of L'Emerico will be released, in which many years of researchand study converge, whose results we are keen to see written in your eyes and on your faces.

What is certain, lastly, is that we will keep drinking wine and enjoying all the wonderful emotions it has to give. Even all this situation will surely pass, like the great Italian singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André wrote about his “exile” at the Hotel Supramonte: “This station too shall pass, doing no harm This thin rain will pass, as the pain passes”

See you very soon.