Personalities

Ideal model
"Magnum" №3 (3) November 2005

Cristina Geminiani lives in Romagna — not the most exciting place from point of view of wines made there.

Yet thanks to extraordinary management, her Fattoria Zerbina has got the fame of ideal model of a modern winery.

A specialist qualified in agriculture and an enologist, Cristina inherited family vineyards in 1987. For the first ten years she got help from influential consultant Vittorio Fiore, after that she was ready to prove Fattoria Zerbina reputation on her own. At present Cristina with enviable consistency creates wines which stir winelovers in Italy and abroad. Pietramora is one of the best Sangiovese wines outside Tuscany. Scaccomatto is an original dessert wine which finds little comparison in Italy.

One of Cristina’s secrets lies in constantly perfecting herself, her vineyards and wines. Great love for sweet wines sent her to study in Bordeaux, and after twenty years of work she has not stopped attending various training courses.

In the late eighties Cristina was the first who switched Sangiovese vineyards to the albarello system. Vines are trained in bush style, density of plantings goes as high as 11,000 vines per hectare. The results were impressive, gradually all Fattoria Zerbina vineyards will be cultivated by the scheme. Special attention goes to clonal selection — primarily for Sangiovese, but also for Merlot and other varieties growing in Fattoria Zerbina.

Cristina’s second trump card is white sweet wines. They are made from local Albana grape after the style of Sauternes. This is a rare case in Italy that harvest affected by the noble rot, turns into successful dessert wines.

Strict selection lies at core of quality for all Fattoria Zerbina wines. Cristina singled out 22 plots on the total vineyard area of 40 hectares. Having studied them with pedantic accuracy, she chose suitable varieties for each one of them and now grows Sangiovese, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Ancellotta, Syrah, Albana, Trebiano and Chardonnay.

Cristina’s latest know-how is creation of detailed vineyard maps which show development of vines from flowering to crop ripening. The plants are classified by vigour — from weak to extra active. This helps define microzones inside the vineyards, monitor the quality of grapes and be selective during harvesting.

An ideally equipped Fattoria Zerbina winery is not an achievement on its own, but a way to get best interpretation of the character of the vineyard, be it power and structure or refinement and elegance. "In my winemaking I aim to complete and integrate each of the values of each single vineyard, fully respecting the high potential of the fruit from each special area. Only by releasing the pure character of the vines in each microclimate can we show the real value and richness of our terroir", says Cristina. Who can argue that this is not the model to follow?

Cristina Geminiani about…

...Sangiovese clones
Sangiovese is our main grape. After 5 years of experience in harvesting we saw that the local varieties were much more preferable in the area. The soil that we have got in our region usually is a bit richer than Tuscany. Vines must suit this condition. In 1960s the University of Bologna made clonal selection of a local variety of Sangiovese in Emilia-Romagna, but the focus was on productivity, not quality. In the last 10 years we have replanted all vineyards first planted by my grandfather 40 years ago. We selected the best plants from our own vineyards.
They proved the theory of adaptation. With more restrictive pruning, without any chemicals, without any fertilization the plant that has been selected for quantity 40 years ago now can be much more restrictive in production, it produces slowly and very good quality.

...white varieties
White varieties of Romagna are Trebbiano and Albana. We are not pushing so much for Trebbiano because it’s a variety that gives nice white wine, but very simple. It is to be drunk in a couple of years.
We are very focused on the Albana variety. We have made the choice 20 years ago to start to produce some dessert wine which is really unusual because we try to get the botrytis. Albana vines are planted at the lower part of the hill near the lakes. We can manage it almost every year to have a good selection of botrytis. It just happened twice — in 1999 and 2002 — that we haven’t produced any dessert wine. It’s interesting that the type of wine that you can get with botrytis is completely different from the wine that is made with dried grapes.

...noble rot
This is not the Italian tradition. In the region we are just the ones who make the wines like this.
Botrytis is something that must be really managed well because the only secret to make it a great wine is just to follow the dryness of the fungus. If you follow how the botrytis develops and choose the time when it gets dry to pick it, you don’t have to manage too much in the cellar.
We started to produce this wine in 1987, but it was really 1992 where we could understand how to manage the botrytis in terms of selection. Then we harvested very dry berries. The last exceptional vintage is 2001.

...specialisation
We produce 16,000 cases, and 90% of the production is Sangiovese. We are focusing on Sangiovese because we are in a land that’s very good for it and it’s the more traditional grape.
Albana is a small but very high quality production. We are very focused also on Albano because we are really proud to show this wine which costs to us a lot of passion and work to make a few bottles of very high quality.

...style of wines
The highest challenge is to keep the identity of the wines. Too many people are making wines with Sangiovese, for example. Pietramora has been successful because it has the imprint of the place. We want to get a very good identification of the terroir of the area and to make powerful wine without losing its fruit and its freshness. The wines must be nice to taste, but they also must be nice to combine with food so it’s important to make wine which is very drinkable.

...technologies
What we have to do is to select the best quality in the vines and to be very good in making blends. It’s good to have technology in terms of good tanks, stainless tanks, control of temperature.
The real quality of the wine must come from the soil expression and from our capacity of selecting the best vineyard.
Modern technologies must only support wines. It’s like with barrels. You have to use good barrel, but just to complement, not to dominate the wine.

...female winemaking
I’m really the first in my family who is making wine because my grandfather and my father had consultants, but they didn’t make the wines. Predominantly it’s men’s work, but in the last 7-8 years the world has changed. The advantage of female winemaking is that that it is seen as something different. It is great when you are different from everybody else.