Brunello di Montalcino

Our socio-economical idea is based on excellence

1. Principles of excellence
2. Why excellence will work
3. How excellence will work
4. How we implement our socio-economical idea at Podere Le Ripi

1. Principles of excellence

Excellent products do not enter the price race that often brings "normal" products in a spiral of economizations that reduce labour in hours as in cost. Excellent products do not look for cheap labour, nor for quality compromising automation and/or cost reducing policies.

Excellent products need a much higher amount of labour than "normal" products. They ask for many more hours of work, mostly done by human hands, but also much higher attention, sensitivity, even discipline, because the compromise of “imperfection” is not contemplated by excellence.

2. Why excellence will work

We’ve seen too many jobs, once dedicated to quality, being lost to this spiral of cost reduction. And it went so far, that today we have difficulties to realize full employment in our countries. With this model we produced the "jobless recovery", a social plague that could become very dangerous and that is quite difficult to control.

A good way to increase the absorption of jobs by any industry is through the incremental need of skilled workers that a more and more quality demanding society will create: because excellence requires more labour.

3. How excellence will work

We are a very “price oriented” society. We chose the cheapest. We look for bargains. We prefer a tiny price to a great quality. We are less and less quality oriented.

The race of prices has already shown the results it produces: now we have to enter the race of excellence.

The tendency to cheap and mediocre is our economical trap: we must get out of it by understanding what my father Ernesto always said:

"The sweetness of a small price is quickly overwhelmed by the bitterness of its mediocre quality."

We must put our consumer’s pleasure again at the centre: to do this we need culture, in order to understand and enjoy excellence. People like us, the excellent producers, must sustain this culture.

We must communicate the pleasure and the joy that excellence can bring to every possible consumer in every possible way. Doing so, our “price oriented” society will slowly turn in “quality oriented”, creating lots of quality jobs. Jobs that people will love to do.

Every excellent producer has to accept this cultural challenge: a society running only after bargains will become unsustainable, for the very obvious fact that the first condition of sustainability is a job for every citizen.

This brings all of us to understand that our mission is to “make and tell” excellence. We will do it and it will work.

4. How we implement our socio-economical idea at Podere Le Ripi

At Podere Le Ripi we do all the possible to produce excellent* wines.

"All the possible" means that:

• we do by hand everything we can, from pruning to hoeing to keep the vines free from herbs, from harvest to selection to destemming (some of our wines are destemmed by hand)
• also biodynamic needs a huge work done by hand: from the production to the spreading of the 500 & 501 liquids and of the tisanes, to the sowing of the herbs and flowers mixtures in the vineyard, to all the other biodynamic activities a lot of work done by hand is needed. On the other side there will be no chemical compounds to be found in our products, which in our opinion makes a much healthier wine
• we invest a lot in the new oak vats and barrels for the cellar: new and healthy oak from the Vosges helps the wines to develop more structured and gives them a longer life
• also behind this highest quality oak there is an enormous quantity of work done by hand as you can see in the video “A Vat is Born”. From the 200 and more years of woodman intense work needed to get an oak tree to be ready to become this wonderful wood for wine to the selection, the aging and the construction, a vat or barrel or cask takes skilled experience and many hours of work, the most done by hand
• even the gentle bottling needs a lot of skilled workers, as the cork producers need it in order to guarantee the quality a wine like ours needs
• and our vineyards are planted very dense, up to 62.500 plants per hectare, which asks again for an enormous amount of gentle and skilled labour

But investing a huge amount of work done by the hands of skilled, sensitive and dedicated persons that really love their job is just the first part of our idea.

We know that we produce something that is very rare, that the people who work with us live in a wonderful surrounding, breathe a pure and aromatic air, make a job that they love and that makes them happy and proud when they taste the results. This model produces a much better quality of life for all the involved…

… but… what is needed to keep this virtuous spiral alive is… you.

You, as the person that is interested in what we tell, in how we make these things, in how our products taste and smell.

So the second part of our idea is fulfilled only if we are able to tell our stories in a fascinating way.

That’s why we produced and will continue to produce our videos telling the wine in the broadest possible way.

If your interest about a specific theme is not fully explained let us know and we will be happy to realize improvements based on your suggestions.

*We accept the notion that our excellence is the product of winemaking practices that we conceive as the best possible. Meaning that we accept the limits of our sensibility to define those practices, and we use experience and confrontation with all kind of critics in order to increase constantly this sensibility.