Today we are in the company of Violante Gardini Cinelli Colombini, a life spent in the wine sector until the presidency of AGIVI, the association of young Italian wine entrepreneurs.
Welcome Violante
Thank you very much for this opportunity to be with you
From 2019 at the helm of AGIVI.
Here, can you describe the association, the structure and also the path you have taken within the association?
So, meanwhile, AGIVI, the young Italian wine entrepreneurs were born in 1989 from a need for members belonging to the Italian Wine Union, so we are a part of this association and we say the young rib because we are all young people under 40.
What is our purpose?
To network, to bring together young people with the desire to be together with the passion of wine, not only producers, but also those in the related wine sector, therefore all those guys who have a passion for wine, who have decided to put together the their skills, their passions and to make it a job and to associate with our association because they have the opportunity to exchange ideas, to train, to travel together, for example we have just returned from a trip to Provence, we were 4 days to study an important market trend such as rosé wines.
That then in short, from his own experience in the movement of wine tourism I imagine that in short he can say about it. How has the wine tourism sector in Italy also changed?
Back then, absolutely a lot has changed.
In the meantime, I would like to state that in my family it has always been essential to be a team.
I am an only child, so after me they said well enough, but here is the way to approach, to team up, to look both at work and at the possibilities of improving personally, even in my family there has always been the will to stay with others and to confront each other.
So here is the desire to be part of various associations, the first that gave me the opportunity to get involved was the Tuscan wine tourism movement where I was president for 7 years, but there too many things are done together because it is the companies that make them so in fact the important thing is to be able to offer packages, in the case of tourism or in any case innovative ideas that know how to entertain people.
Well, and it is also a great opportunity in a certain sense to give a voice to young wine entrepreneurs, indeed to listen to their voice and listen to their point of view on some of the most important issues today, such as sustainability.
What is the point of view of the young wine entrepreneurs?
Then it is very important.
Sustainability is opening our ears and understanding that wine does not have a specific recipe to be produced.
It is nature that year after year dictates how to do it in a unique way considering where you are, where you have the vineyards and what is the main characteristic of the territory and the personality that you want to bring out with your wine.
So sustainability for a young person is an opportunity first of all, it is the desire to give greater importance to the fact that wine is made in the vineyard.
Having the opportunity to enter a vineyard that often has fossils, for example in the ground, so just go and touch the ground, and on the other side even maybe take a walk with an agronomist. Or there are wineries that have made real paths with works of art in the cellar or in the vineyard, trekking routes, by bike or on horseback.
So there are many ways to consider the issue of sustainability, which for a young person goes beyond just nature which is perhaps considered the very basis.
Being sustainable in the vineyard is the starting point. Now we must be sustainable from a production point of view, but we must also consider everything else: transport, packaging, I am referring to glass.
So an ever lighter bottle, how this bottle is packaged, how it is transported and, also always returning to tourism, how we welcome our tourist.
So solar panels on the roof to try to exploit your energy as much as possible, and why not also have sustainable company vehicles and columns for those with electric cars. Here, it is an important market.
Another recurring theme and obviously even more so I am happy to be able to talk about it with young wine entrepreneurs is that of communication there is this desire on the one hand to simplify this great variety of vines that we have in Italy of denominations to make the our communication abroad and on the other hand the discourse of identity always pulls, that is not to lose what is instead considered by many, if not by all, as our great heritage therefore not to be touched in short, rather to be protected.
Here, too, what is the point of view of the young people?
The young person is seen as the slightly more technological one, the more curious one, the one who was sometimes a little pushed aside because he had too many ideas, because he wanted this part of sales or communication made online, to be stronger and stronger and to have an ever louder voice.
Here, the covid arrived, the young man had the opportunity to really have his say
I am 37 years old, so here it is already not so young anymore, but a twenty year old blows you away in front of the possibilities of communicating, therefore of having a storytelling.
A communication that is based on the territory again but also on a distinctive identity.
The guys have a lot of ideas and they want us to be confronted, they want to take them out and discuss future projects.
Sustainability was one of the many issues that has been talked about a lot in the communication.
So on this very theme of the denominations there was no proposal by AGIVI. Precisely on this beautiful table of confrontation, also in relation to the new assignment and the new change of positions in the Italian Wine Union, in the new political program there is also much talk of this simplification of the denominations.
So as AGIVI, as young people, did you bring your own idea?
Then there is still to think that many many denominations in Italy have management councils where the young part is growing more and more, the Italian wine union has always believed in us so they were the first to want to open this rib. But here, I must say that in Italy we are probably not the most advanced of all, but there is something that is moving, both on the one hand for women and on the other hand for young people. It is also true that young people cannot think of entering and opening up the race, there must be, and it is right that there is, a training model, a moment of coaching.
I feel honored to have had with Ernesto Abbona and now with Lamberto Frescobaldi some very important figures at my side who have always given me the opportunity to listen to them and to be able to report our idea.
But on the other hand it is also right, which is a little bit the principle of Italian wine, to be between something that can be the future is what the past was.
For example, the board of directors of the Brunello consortium comes to mind, where there are several figures, including important ones, for example two of the vice-presidents of the Brunello consortium, who are young.
So here it is.But it is also right that we can bring our ideas, even on tiptoe, so this is how it must be a change, it must be stronger and stronger.
Sure sure.
And on this discourse between past and future it comes to my mind that another change that has been in favor of young people over the years has been the great mobility in the case of exports, that is, the greatest possibility for a young entrepreneur. today to travel the world to move independently to seek new markets.
The new communication tools are also complicit, so it seems that the levels of communication in the return of the world are much more thinned, there is much closer proximity even with a customer who may be on the other side of the world, which in the past. therefore in what were the other generations of wine entrepreneurs, it was more difficult, so there was another type of approach to the foreign market.
How are you experiencing this as an association?
Meanwhile we in the various training things that we have normally done every year do at least two training courses in addition to the trips that are one in Italy and one Abroad alternate year after year, for example now in two days we will go to the Gambero Red with which we have been collaborating for some years precisely to study market trends which in this case will be bubbles, rosé wines and wines with a low alcohol content.
In the past we have also done courses with experts both as regards an analysis of numbers and therefore precisely the value that Italian wine has in specific markets, on the other hand, however, also the comparison with entrepreneurs and also Export managers who brought their experience in specific sectors, for example a few years ago we made the Brazilian market and the Russian and Canadian markets.
Here, an important analysis is also seen from aspects of different wines and logically different regions and denominations.
Young people in our association are the ones who travel with the most happiness.
Last year, when we had the opportunity to collaborate with various organic abroad, our association was the first to be called because, even in a more risky moment, the young man is ready to pack his suitcase and leave. And this is just an instinct, in the sense that we like to travel, and sometimes, we probably don’t even study so much and this is something to improve, in the sense that before traveling or throwing ourselves into a new market and wanting it to open for your own sector you need to know it.
It must be studied both from the point of view of traditions and also as an approach. There are more formal markets, less formal markets.
There is a very long tradition present in a Chinese or Japanese market, for the Americans for example it is much easier because they have a way of speaking much more similar to ours.
Here, continuing to travel is a beautiful instinct which then leads you to want to use knowing to have stronger and stronger objectives that inevitably in all our companies are linked to Export because it is the slice of sales made outside Italy is very important.
Here, we have in a certain sense outlined the identikit of the new export manager, if we think of the first great pioneers of Italian wine who exported and acted as the flag of our country in the United States now there is this new figure , this new young character who begins to approach the world certainly also with different eyes.
Thank you, thank you so much president for taking the time
Thank you