The following excerpts have been translated from Gian Luca Mazzella’s interview with Brunello di Montalcino producer Gianfranco Soldera (Il Fatto Quotidiano, August 14, 2010). Translation by VinoWire.

Italian viticulture has been radically transformed over the last thirty years. Has the quality of the wines improved, as so many claim?

Momentous change has occurred over the last thirty years. But whether or not the quality of the wines has improved has yet to be seen. Consider the facts: in the 1970s, I produced 15,000 of the 700-800,000 total bottles of Brunello [produced each year]. Today, more than 7 million bottles are produced and there are those who would like to increase that number to 14 million. I continue to produce the same quantity of wine. This gives you a sense of the dimension of change. The wine market is in the hands of corporations instead of grape-growers. Making matters worse, there has been a marked decrease in the number of wine connoisseurs.

Why has quantity increased but not quality?

Industrial winemaking has grown because it controls the commerce of wine. The current difficulties of the wine economy are due to the fact that small winemakers are not able to get their products to the end user. This is because they can’t produce the numbers nor the marketing necessary to be able to count on the global market. I believe in direct sales of everyday products. The problem is consumer culture and the forces of the media and an economy driven by people who don’t want consumers with culture.

Your winery belongs to the Brunello di Montalcino Consortium: you must be aware of the fact that the body’s new president Ezio Rivella recently declared that 80% of the Brunello had been produced by flagrantly adding Merlot to the Sangiovese and thus violating the appellations regulation which require that only Sangiovese be used.

If he says so, it must mean that he knows so. I don’t know. I’d like to ask the critics just one thing: what have you seen and tasted over the last 20 years? I’d like to know where the critics have been. They ought to critique themselves.

What do you think of the natural wine, biologic, and organic wine movements?

Everyone does whatever he wants. I make natural wine. If it’s not natural, it’s not wine. I have never given and will never give any type of poison to my land, to my vines, or my wines. The earth is life. Nowhere is it written that biologic or organic wines have the characteristics necessary for a natural wine.

What about biodynamics?

Let me say it again: everyone does whatever he wants. Steiner, the father of biodynamics, didn’t really know that much about agriculture.

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The following story was first reported by VinoWire editor Franco Ziliani via Sommelier.it, the official site of the Italian Association of Sommeliers.

In a two-part video interview posted here and here via YouTube last week by Italian wine writer Carlo Macchi (editor of the online food and wine magazine WineSurf), the newly elected president of the Brunello Producers Association (Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino), Ezio Rivella, dropped a bombshell when he said that before the Brunello scandal broke in 2008, “80% of the wine” labeled as Brunello di Montalcino “was not pure Sangiovese.” He added that “only small amounts of other grapes, up to 5%,” were blended into the wines but, when pressed, he confirmed that “it was a widely accepted practice.”

When asked about his plans to revitalize the appellation, he told Macchi that his top priority was to stabilize pricing among the growing number of bottlers of Brunello. Many, he said, were selling low-quality wines at extremely low prices labeled as Brunello. Another issue he plans to address, he said, was a re-branding of Rosso di Montalcino. “We need to stop thinking of Rosso di Montalcino as second-hand Brunello,” he told Macchi.

When pressed about his intention to re-write the appellation regulations for Brunello, potentially allowing for the use of grapes other than Sangiovese, Rivella answered that “the law states that the producers decide” how the wine should be made “and the producers have decided that the wine should be 100% Sangiovese. So, for the moment, we will not be discussing this. But we will be in future.”

When asked who in the world of wine had impressed him the most over the course of his long career, he said that “Robert Mondavi was the personality who impressed me the most, because of his serious approach to our work.”

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“One of the greatest and most extraordinary people in the world of wine,” wrote VinoWire contributor Franco Ziliani in a heartfelt tribute to the beloved and revered maestro of the Italian wine world, “the greatest nose and the greatest palate I’ve ever met, Giorgio Grai turns 80 today.”

With his wines, wrote Franco in a profile devoted to Grai and published on the Italian Sommelier Association website, “Giorgio Grai has taught a tide of persons (myself included) the importance of the central concepts of wine — balance, drinkability, and elegance — by maintaining them as its indisputable and timeless cornerstones.

In 2000, New York Times wine writer Frank Prial wrote of Grai, quoting colleague Sheldon Wasserman:

Giorgio Grai is one of the legendary winemakers of Italy but is almost unknown in this country. The late Sheldon Wassermann, who wrote extensively about Mr. Grai in ”Italy’s Noble Red Wines” (Macmillan, 1991), once said: ”Giorgio is only interested in making the wine. Selling it interests him not at all.”

Rather like an appellate court judge, Giorgio Grai is rarely involved in the early stages of winemaking. He has never owned vineyards, but he does make wine, for many different cantine, or wineries. For his own label he prefers to buy finished wines and blend them. He is from the Alto Adige in the far north of Italy, but he makes wine in Tuscany, the Piedmont and as far south as Apulia.

His cabernet sauvignon is considered by many Italians to be the best produced in that country. It is full-bodied with classic black-currant flavors, but its elegance and long finish are neither Bordeaux-like nor Italian. It is an exceptional wine, and most unusual.

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