The valley of natural wine – Valentina Pigmei

The tour starts from Rivergaro: not far from the castle, take a long avenue surrounded by vineyards and at the end, La Stoppa, with its watchtower, appears. Here Elena Pantaleoni, flanked by the guru of natural wines Giulio Armani, is responsible for the conversion of the company and the inclusion of native varieties of vines. Not only that, Pantaleoni has managed to network, creating a real community around the production of natural wine with an entrepreneurial idea that is both radical and far-sighted.

“Making natural wine as it was done until the postwar period is a political, democratic act, it is deciding to work with nature and this involves risks, ‘defects’, wines that are always different from one vintage to another, but nature does not it’s reassuring, you can’t control everything. Industrial organic, on the other hand, is a fake reassurance.

In the long run, working in this field also rewards from an economic point of view, but it takes time ”. Pantaleoni, who in her previous life was a bookseller, welcomes you in a meticulously ordered open space where imperfections, to tell the truth, do not seem to exist. The company can be visited every day, and on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays you can also have lunch inside the splendid house, enjoying simple dishes based on vegetables from the garden and of course surprising wines such as the sublime Ageno or the enveloping Macchiona.

About fifteen minutes by car, towards Travo, is the house of Shun Minowa, 37, a Japanese expatriate in Italy five years ago. Shun worked for some time at La Stoppa and then started making wine by himself (literally: he collects, bottles, labels, sells). Shun, a graduate in biology, explains that he was attracted to this valley as it happened to San Colombano 1,400 years ago: “I don’t know why, but the Trebbia valley has something special. This mystical, spiritual feeling that I feel here, I have not felt elsewhere. If you think of a mountain like the Parcellara stone you understand what I mean ”.

Shun’s “silent wine” has oriental names and symbols and Emilian and charismatic flavors. The vines are native, Ortrugo mixed with Malvasia di Candia. The philosophy behind his wines is basically the same as that of his fellow countryman Masanobu Fukuoka, a pioneer of natural agriculture also known as “not doing” who applied Buddhist philosophy to cultivation. After all, Shun called his wine Gate, which is a word from the Heart Sutra, an ancient Zen text that says: “Form is empty, emptiness is form”.

From Buddhist literature we move to the slopes of the valley, to Gariga, towards Podenzano, and enter an immense rural courtyard that recalls the film Twentieth century by Bernardo Bertolucci. The trip to the Trebbia valley is also worthwhile just to taste the rice bomb with pigeon and sturgeon from the Fratelli Pavesi Ostreria. But it is also worth it for its incredible choice of natural, Italian and European wines, and to chat with Giacomo Pavesi. Best host in Italy in 2019 for the guide of Slow Food and contagiously sympathetic, Pavesi with his r from Piacenza is a true host, one of those who tell the dishes with irony and precision, without ever taking himself too seriously.

From a courtyard you pass to a threshing floor, that of the farm and winery Il Poggio di Andrea Cervini, in Statto. Cervini also followed in the footsteps and advice of Giulio Armani and transformed the family business. A room for 30 euros per night and a breakfast of Japanese tea and homemade cakes. Cervini wine can be recognized because on the label there is a drawing of an elephant. It is that of Hannibal, who here in 218 BC won against the Romans in the famous battle of the Trebbia. Andrea, with his “forest sailor” air, produces wines that reflect his idea of ​​life and viticulture. His daughters, Carolina and Elisa, young but already very good at cooking traditional dishes such as pisarei and fasò (dumplings with beans) and anolini in third grade broth, are shy and kind. And they pronounce everything with the inevitable rolled r of these parts.

To travel to the Trebbia valley in search of natural wines, you don’t need a guide: the peculiarity of this district is that the winemakers have teamed up to the point of creating a real community. “There is a very rare spirit of synergy”, says Gae Saccoccio, philosopher of wine and host of the Rimessa Roscioli in Rome. “These winemakers breathe almost in unison, they exchange agricultural and commercial aid, they share foreign importers and above all they are faithful to a practical feeling of community”.

Finally, from Poggio we leave for Bobbio, in the upper Trebbia valley, the birthplace of the director Marco Bellocchio and since the Middle Ages the cultural center and seat of the largest library in Europe. No wonder Colombano chose the Trebbia valley as a place to spend the last part of his life. The atmosphere is Nordic and melancholy, the Gobbo bridge, named for its irregular profile, has been rebuilt several times, but still maintains a fairytale atmosphere. Worth visiting is the abbey of San Colombano, especially for the Romanesque mosaics found in a restoration of the early twentieth century.

The municipal hostel, inside Palazzo Tamburelli, is elegant and economical: frescoed ceilings and bunk beds. We are in tune with the example that Saccoccio cites when he wants to explain the philosophy of natural wine: Democritus, the Greek philosopher of whom only a few fragments remain, argued that true happiness equals tranquility. Not to do. From Japan to ancient Greece, from Ireland to the Trebbia Valley, humanity is still here.