Author： Marcella Pace
The bottles descend underground, at a depth of two and a half meters, in the vineyard where those grapes have ripened.
There, they will rest for an entire year, only to resurface and unveil the new properties they have acquired through this special maturation process.
It is called Vinum Terrae (the wine of the Earth), and it is the new project of Cantina Produttori di Ramuscello e San Vito, a cooperative composed of 158 members, founded in 1959 in Friuli Venezia Giulia, northeastern Italy.
In June 2022, they celebrated their sixtieth year of production. Located in a highly suitable viticulture region, the majority of the vineyards are situated along the plain of the Tagliamento River, which has bestowed its precious elements upon this fertile land for millennia.
The hamlet of Ramuscello, in addition to being the heart of the viticultural area of Destra Tagliamento, is also equidistant from the neighboring Veneto region, where there is a high concentration of vineyards. For this reason, the Cantina di Ramuscello plays a strategic role for many winemakers.
On the occasion of International Mother Earth Day, celebrated every year on April 22nd, Cantina Produttori di Ramuscello e San Vito has chosen to launch its new project, which combines experimentation, sustainability, and solidarity.
555 bottles of Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso Doc Friuli Venezia Giulia with Vegan Certification, a wine from the 2022 harvest, aged in stainless steel with a brief passage in oak barrels, have been buried in the ground.
“We chose this symbolic date for our initiative to signify the constant attention of the winery towards the environment, sustainability, and solidarity,” explains Gianluca Trevisan, president of the cooperative in the province of Pordenone. “
In fact, exactly one year from now, when we extract them from the ground, these bottles will be appropriately labeled, distinguishing them from the normal production line.
All the bottles, strictly numbered, will be duly valued, either through an important auction or sold through regular distribution channels, and the proceeds will be entirely donated to the Community of Sant’Egidio in Rome to support their crucial work on organizing ‘Humanitarian Corridors’.”
For 12 months, therefore, the evolution and refinement of this red wine will take place in an environment protected from external interferences and in a completely natural manner.
During this innovative aging process, the total absence of light and, above all, noise that could in some way negatively alter the wine’s organoleptic characteristics will be crucial.
“From a technical standpoint,” continues the winery director, Rodolfo Rizzi, “the bottles of Refosco, the quintessential native grape variety of our region, have been buried in the vineyard where the grapes that created it were harvested, at a depth that intersects with the spring waters of the Tagliamento river, which are relatively shallow here.
In a year’s time, before labeling and offering the bottles for sale, after careful analysis, we will be able to verify, through a tasting with the top experts in the industry, the qualitative developments of this wine that has spent 365 days in ‘absolute rest.’
Days spent in darkness, in the total silence of the underground, where only the slow movement of its parent plant’s roots could lull it. It is a message we wanted to convey on International Earth Day, to demonstrate how everything returns to the earth.
We have good prospects that the aging process will take place under optimal conditions, in complete darkness, without noise, with zero vibrations or movements of the wine in the bottle, and with a constant temperature favored by the spring water from the Tagliamento river.”
Once brought back to light, the bottles will be packaged in wooden crates, accompanied by a vial of river water and small clumps of soil from the vineyard where they have been stored.
The aging process in the depths of the earth being carried out by Cantina Ramuscello is not the first experiment of its kind. In the early 2000s, winemaker Daniele Ricci, in the hills of Tortona in the province of Alessandria, aged large bottles of Timorasso two meters underground.
