"Being a team is a dream; It's the greatest dream of a parent". The beginning of a dream: May 1968. Outbreak of student's protest. Aldo Vaira is 15 years old and joins the group of young protesters who flooded the streets of Turin. Perhaps the story would have taken another turn, if Aldo was not discovered by his father and immediately send to Barolo to spend the summer in the grandparents' farm, far away from trouble.
Those months spend between the vines and fields ignite the dream: a life spent in the beauty and freedom of nature.
"Many times we have different ideas, positions, different point of views, but at the same time there is this certainty that there is only one truth. That's why, sooner or later, everyone will understand it." Imaginatian at work: Aldo is still a minor and his counter-current choice is a shock during the years of the economic miracle and of depopulation of the countryside. In 1971 he joins Suolo e Salute, becoming a pioneer of organic farming in Piedmont. The 1972 vintage is harsh. Facing the only apparent possibility to leave the bunches on the vine, Aldo does not give up and vinifies his first bottles.
The energy of the beginning is all collected in the note that still is written on the first page of the Marescalchi, the university enology manual: imagination at work. In the obstinate and contrary direction: As a couple it is easier to walk "in the obstinate and contrary direction", as the title of a famous album by Fabrizio de André. These are the years of the massal selection for the Coste & Fossati® (1979), the Freisa cultivated in Bricco delle Viole (1980), the first Rhine Riesling planted in Piedmont (1985), the counter-current choice of renouncing to the excessive use of French wood to devote themselves to a style of finesse and elegance. Aldo earns the title of "the most modern of the traditionalists and the most traditional of the modernists".
In the meantime Giuseppe (1985), Francesca (1987) and Isidoro (1990) are born. Passing on the flame (today): Gustav Mahler wrote that "the tradition is not to preserve the ashes, but to pass on the flame."
This is the present to our winery. Always made of new dreams, research, discoveries, also sacrifice, life and joy! There is no vineyard, no terroir, without the land.
To love it is simple, but not easy. The land is generous and alive.
It is beautiful. It needs understanding and time.
It takes your breath away with its colors and many wonders.
The land asks for absolute dedication. It asks to be loved for better or worse, in abundance and scarcity. The land is almost more than a house. It's part of our life and asks to be guarded with the same tenderness that we have for our loved ones. And the amazing thing is that, despite all the difficulties, to love it does not need any effort.
