Big wineries versus small ones

If you could flight, riding on some magical creature in Harry Potter style, around all Italy in this September, looking from above, you would realize the different and beautiful landscapes but also something common to the entire country: in fact, from Sicily to Trentino Alto Adige, from Piedmont to Veneto, from Liguria to Tuscany and Umbria, Campania and Puglia and Calabria, people is harvesting. The ways to grow vines are different, so the landscape resulted from the vineyards is different from region to region, but the commitment is the same in all Italy and the world. The production of Italian wine is full and rich, some of the best italian wines are: Amarone, Bardolino, Pinot Grigio, Prosecco, Chianti red wine Tuscany, Brunello Montalcino wine, Super tuscans…

In many big wineries people harvest with the machines: these vineyards are treated at an industrial level, and often pesticides and herbicides are used to “keep order.” They are actually quite different from those vineyards where man and nature meet, sometimes collide, creating struggle but also perfect marriage of cleverness and naturalness. Industrial harvest business, is characterized by the use of machines that in a short time suck the bunches and divide the stalks from the grapes. The sucking machine switches between rows, and in doing so the branches and leaves of the vine are brutally torn from the plant and often with them are sucked also bees, wasps, butterflies and other insects, and even small geckos and lizards that have in the vine created their own home or the headquarters of their raids. In small family run wineries, the vines are like family people, a good wine maker is also able to recognize plant by plant, because each of them has a shape and a personality, and it is monitored and treated all the time.

From childhood delicacy, when the cuttings are growing and need to be protected, to the “recklessness” of youth when the branches go everywhere and you have to direct them, from the maturity of the grapes to the wine wisdom and his aging. This year was a perfect sunny 2016 so the Merlot was harvested in late August because it is an early grape type, which now is already brewing in the cellars; now’s the time to harvest Sangiovese, Canaiolo and Cabernet Sauvignon, ready to go to the fermentation and prepare the new red Chianti wine and in general all the red wines in Tuscany

The boutique wineries that you can visit in our Tuscany Wine Tasting Tour, with a short trip from Florence, are harvesting, needless to say, by hand and you will only find owners that love their vines like their children

For this reason, when you’ll taste one of these wines made “by hand” in our Wine Tasting Tour, you’ll find out that after just one sip you will be able to appreciate the difference between a big industrial winery and a small boutique one.