Today sees the start of an important new chapter in the history of the vineyards of the San Leonardo estate, because the lessons in pruning from “grape preparation experts Marco Simonit and Pierpaolo Sirch”, masters of the pruning and restoration of old vineyards, begin this very day. 

It should be stressed that it is not as if, up until now, we have been unable to manage our vineyards; rather, the fact is that over recent years we have realised that our vineyards have, alas, been assailed by esca disease, the scourge that is slowly but surely decimating the more “elderly” vines – i.e. those with the greatest experience, so to speak, which are of course those that contribute decisively to imbuing our wines with such character and texture.

As soon as we became aware – ten years ago now – of the onset of this terrible disease, we started to look around for a solution, which we had hoped would come via our French nursery experts. After various attempts, which produced little in the way of tangible results, we returned to Italy – to the Friuli region, to be precise – where we met Marco and Pierpaolo through Professor Attilio Scienza, the great exponent of Italy’s winemaking culture.

Their approach to vineyard management fascinated us, and so we immediately visited some of the vineyards that have been managed over the past decade using their technique. There, we found many responses to the questions we had been asking ourselves.

After a couple of visits to our estate and a discussion with the people who take care of our vineyards,

Here’s Marco Simonit together with our team, after having dissected a number of diseased vines.

we decided to open this new chapter, and so, from today onwards, we are starting the theory and practice lessons in the vineyard, and we hope that, within three years, we will have succeeded in stemming the tide of this scourge by making the vines more robust. The implementation of this new method of pruning is aimed not only at ensuring the longevity of the vineyard but also at guaranteeing that it produces grapes more effectively.

But this is not all that’s new: we thought that you, too, would be interested in what’s going on in our vineyards, so we have asked the two pruning instructors to tell you – in their own words – about the extraordinary restoration project we are undertaking together. As such, we will be opening a new section of this blog to let our two friends have their say.

We very much hope that these posts, dedicated exclusively to the progress being made in the vineyard, will be of interest to you. We are convinced that, if you stay up to date on our activities through this blog, you will want to savour the perfumes of the soil and the seasons, as well, of course, as some great wine.

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