In 1977, in opposition to the large-scale introduction to the intensive and specialised farming, Ottavio Rube joined forces with neighbouring farmers Cesare Berutti and Enrico Boveri to form the cooperative Valli Unite. This small estate in Costa Vescovato, Piedmont, was set up to keep alive the tradition of cyclical and self sustaining agriculture. The Rube family has been producing renowned wines on these slopes since 1382. Valli Unite combined the farms’ vineyards and built stalls to for farm animals to provide organic manure to fertilise their fields and vines. This self-sufficient community, now numbering thirty, also grows various grains, vegetables and fruits, and raises pigs and cows.
Ottavio and his partners kick-started organic viticulture in Italy at a time when the vast majority of grapes were intended for vino sfuso: ‘loose’ (unbottled) wine produced in large vats and sold from the tap. While other producers were introducing selected fruit yeasts in their wines to add strange exotic scents (pineapple did not only land on your pizza), and vines were drowned in pesticides and systemic fungicides, these resistant producers remained wedded to history and geology.
The estate does not use Barriques, the Bordeaux style 225 litres barrels that mellow wines more by speeding up oxygenation. Barriques are made for cooler climates, where tannins are lacking. On the southern lopes of Piedmont they tend to cover up the flavours, so you end up with huge doses of vanilla and wood. Valli Unite’s larger barrels guarantee that no shortcuts are taken, the wine will age naturally. Some imperfections will remain, a stronger acidity recalling a rainy year, or toasted notes denoting a very dry end of season. Barriques, mopping up all this variation, remind us to barricade against homogeneity.
Wine says Ottavio, should express many time spans: the millions of years of geology, the shorter cycle of botanical layering, the millenary cycle of human intervention, and finally the climatic tribulations of the year. The idea of crowd pleasing, commercially tailored, fruit driven wines with identical vintages, is what he calls ‘plastic surgery wine’; something that ‘leaves you deeply unsatisfied, like the happy ending of a Hollywood movie.
Text provided by www.aubertandmascoli.com