Agricola Foradori (Trentino)

Letter from Theo Zierock dated 2 May, 2020

Dear friends,

This time I am not even going to ask if you are alright, because obviously we are all navigating in a cloudy and long-lasting shitstorm. I will spare you all my wishes and dreams about the end of the tunnel, but the truth is that things will change and the bonanza of our last years will be slow in recovery.

But to be honest, personally I did rediscover the fragility of life. The beauty of being left only with the essential and the futility of many objects and relations. It is a moment of uncertainty, but at the same time we all see the natural rhythm keeping its pace and shoving the middle finger in our faces together with our post-industrial, post-scientific, post-democratic worries and complaints. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a big believer in this mystical change to come that is about to turn our harmful existence as humans into a post Covid19 world of new illumination and understanding. But these times to come will shake up everything somehow and in fact it’s up to us to drive the direction this chaos will take.

Besides sales, market structure and price-classes, what fascinates me is how taste will change. We have been navigating for some years a high paced but often decadent and self-contradicting wine naturalism. The first decade was bright and clear, with pioneers stepping in for a spontaneous development of grape juice and healthy and non-invasive agriculture as a founding stone. But somewhere along the way something became odd, with marketing, natural-hype and sub-cultural, sectarian dynamics taking the overhand. We became “rebels” and “heroes”, until the constant search for new myths in wine culture became a race to discover the newest superhero in the newest undiscovered corner of the wine world. The pace of taking up and dropping new winemakers felt like a bubble to me in recent times, leaving little space for observing and analysing in depth what wine actually is about. I am not here to solve the enigma, but my belly tells me that I won’t see those loud, rascal-tastings playing out like before. High energy, pseudo-peasant wine orgies for city sommeliers seem now from a time when we were all spoiled. So what will it be after? What do we want to communicate?

I really want to stimulate you to give up part of what you were doing before and rethink how my generation will relate to wine and alcohol consumption.

Now enough...sorry for the preach.

Regarding Foradori:

We have been increasing heavily our vegetable production with my sister Myrtha adapting to the emergency and filling more pergolas with salads/radishes even though she is pregnant (finally children playing in the winery again!) and she will have to manage things from a distance very soon because of the belly. Emilio is busy with two new vineyards we are planting above Rovereto (varietals Nosiola and Schiava) and its the prettiest location you can imagine! We will show you in person as soon as you show up here again. Meanwhile Elisabetta is working with Simona on our cheese production. With five cows it’s not much and we had everything set up in symbiosis with the best restaurants in northern Italy for March, but then the virus crashed it all. So at the moment vegetables, cheese and wine are being delivered home by me and all the other members of the family. It is actually a privileged and amusing job in these times.

Regarding wine:

We are worried about the Italian sales especially, since our Government is trying hard to help, but it still is broke as it was before. Sanitary [i.e. healthcare] spending is rightly put ahead, but that is leaving only peanuts to the small businesses. Horeca [the hospitality industry] in Italy is on its knees and without summer-tourism most will be screwed. People will sell off property to keep the business running, if they have nothing to sell they will be closed by June. As it is 35% of our market we will have to be smart about finding new ways.

The international situation is highly differentiated so I won’t get into the specifics. You are one of our partners and in the last years I have been trying to find the time to get to know each one of you better and build a personal relationship. Often it was difficult, and I did not succeed at times, but from now on that link will be more important.

Foradori is getting more complex in its structural diversification. It used to be simple with “Elisabetta Foradori, the queen of Teroldego, she is amazing”.

I don’t want to take this dream away from you (because my mother is kinda cool), but this is not our reality anymore. Emilio has been making the wines all by himself since 2013 and together with me since 2016 (in the sense that I bother him with my ideas and we are in the cellar together during the crucial phases of vinification). Cheese and vegetables/derivates are growing in importance for us. We have been investing a lot of time and human resources in us being a “farm” and not only a “winery”.

Our team too has grown and is younger than ever before.

What I am trying to say is that we need you to be closer to us, to understand the evolution of the winery more than before, because the pre-packaged sales-pitch of ten years ago might not be working anymore soon. Details, impressions, experiences with us here, transparency, those are the things that will strengthen your ability to communicate Foradori in the future. So please feel more welcome than ever to call and see us.

Regarding Manzoni (finally):

The very good news is that all the wines of 2019 are among the finest we’ve had in the cellar in a long time. Strong acidity, full phenolic ripeness and slightly higher alcohol than usual. They are definitely wines to age and because of this I was scared they would turn out difficult to access when released, but it turns out that they are full of expressive power even now.

As you might remember May 1st is the release date of the Fontanasanta Manzoni Bianco 2019. So please let us know what you want to do. Pick it up, delay it or cancel it?
I know it’s not easy to predict right now how things will go, but please write me, text me, call me, let me know what to do with your allocations. It’s important to help each other so let’s find a way to figure it out together. We are all in this shit and it is a test on our ability to cooperate.

Sincerely,

Theo Zierock