#5 - 2022 Vino di Sante, Contrada Contro with Andrea Polidoro

Andrea Polidoro, head winemaker at Cupano and owner of Contrada Contro, discusses restoring old vines attached to trees, his approach to planting new ones, and his vision for restoring an agroforestry system in his vineyards. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:23 Restoring old vines
• 10:07 Planting new vines attached to trees
• 20:10 Agroforestry
• 28:51 Outro

Transcript

Nelson - Hello, this is One Bottle Three Questions. We are Nelson Pari, and Mike Best, Master of Wine, and today we're drinking 2022 Vino di Sante from Contrada Contro with Andrea Polidoro. Let's start right away with question number one. 

Nelson - Vino di Sante comes from really old vines on their own roots attached to trees that you actually restored. We guess that even today you put a lot of work into the maintenance of these vines. We wanted to know how did you restore them and how do you prune them during the years? 

Andrea - So I started restoring the vines in March 2020. First of all I had to cut... the maple trees, so the branches of the maple trees, because the problem is that the branches of the vines were just going up following the branches of the tree. So I had to bring the canopy of the vines down. So basically I started cutting the maple trees and then... I started pruning the vines. The thing is that I had to be very gentle with them because the thing is that those vines had found their balance after all these years of abandonment because they were still able to give grapes and to be healthy. So I had really to respect their harmony, their balance. So I started basically studying their nature. The first thing that really got my mind because I never saw something like that. is that those vines, they start making grapes from the sixth leaf. So basically very, very far from the trunk. So my point was, if those plants start producing grapes so far from the trunk, it means that they're made for long pruning and for big productions. I really had no clue when I started, I just was talking with old people of the area. That was the only information I had at that time. Then I found some documents that we can talk about, but at the beginning I was really, you know, a newbie. I didn't know anything about those kind of vines. So the thing I did was basically to use the branches of the maple tree to create long guyot, like long fruit branches for the vine trees. And that's what I did. respecting the balance and the harmony of the plant, just cutting the old oak, you know, the dead oak of 30 years, which was, you know, of course, it took me a long time. I was able to prune two maximum three vines per day. It was really, really a long journey, but a very rewarding one. 

Nelson - So I guess that having the vines so high and especially attached to trees requires a specific pruning regiment. Can you tell us more about it? 

Andrea - I basically make a little, little green pruning on the plants. I just take off the buds that I see on the old oak. But then I don't cut any bunches. I don't make any green pruning on the bunches because I acknowledge, and I'm sure, that the plants, they just produce what they can. They have a big bugger, you know, for 140, 130 years old plants, they still produce, you know, average 50 to 60 bunches per plant. If you take a look to one of the last pictures I posted, you can really count 70 grapes. I let them go. And I always harvest when... when I'm happy and when the plant is happy, you know, as I told you, the date is quite fixed. But when I harvest, you have all kind of layers, all kind of complexity, because you will have grapes by the sun so that there will be a little cooked. That's why you can have some peches, you know, some very ripe fruits. And then you also have grapes that are hidden inside the plant. So there will be a little, you know, greenish. So there will... keep the acidity high, keep the alcohol low. So, but in all this complexity and all this layers, there's harmony. So that's what I'm looking for. 

Mike - What are your thoughts with regards to yield management for this kind of vineyard? 

Andrea - So my thought was Mike, that basically I needed to respect what the plant wanted to do and what it wanted to produce. Talking with... the old people of the area, of the corner, they basically told me that the average, our ancestors, were planting 100 plants per hectare. And the average production for each plant was of 50 kilograms of grapes, because it made five tons of grapes per hectare. And it makes total sense for me because our ancestors, they were wise enough to... to need wine for themselves and for their family and for their everyday life. So they were keeping this production quite high. 

Nelson - As you work also with normal, like old vines they are not attached to trees. Can you see the difference in style and quality between a vineyard that is just like an old vine, vineyard or... with viti maritate, attached to trees vineyards? 

Andrea - I think there are a couple of things to say about how those vines are different in terms of quality and they differentiate from the others because I have the same great varieties which is Malvasia Bianca di Candia even in Contrada Tomassucci and Contrada Contro which are two single vineyards that I make. And the first thing that I really noticed in 2020 is that the utment, so the, you know, the lignification of the branches, you know, when the branch turned to the wood. Nowadays, with global warming, we tend to see it, you know, earlier and earlier in even in the in Contrada Tomassucci for example, which is a 1972 vineyard. So it's not a young vineyard. In a very dry vintage, the utment can be done around the 2018 of August. But in the same year, the utment of the married vines will end around the the 5th or the 6th of September. So it really keeps the whole month of August. to make the utment. So this is something that's part of the, I think of the combination of the vine trees to the maple trees and mainly of the, of the un-grafted vines, you know, of this character of being un-grafted. Because this is a kind of an evidence that I, that I studied because when, it's very interesting when, you know, the rooting system and the canopy system speak the same language. They're much more feet, they're much more regular. Also in, you know, in terms of harvest days, just to give you an idea, I started in 2020 with two wines, which were Contrada Contro and Vino di Sante, so Contrada Contro comes from a 1976 vineyard of Trebbiano, Malvasia, and Santa Maria. And in 2020, I harvested Contrada Contro. on the 30th of September and Vino di Sante on the 1st of October. The year after 2021, which was warmer than 2020, I harvested Contrada Contro on the 24th of September, while I harvested Vino di Sante on this exact same day on the 1st of October. And in 2022, I harvested Contrada Contro on the 16th of September, so two weeks earlier than in 2020. while I harvested Vino di Sante on the 30th of September because on the 1st of October, it was raining. So this consistence in terms of the dates of all the phenolic phases of a plant, from the bud break to the flowering, to the allegagione, to the closing of the branch, to the veraison and to the harvest. So those ungranted vines, they do respect. those phases, the difference can be maximum two, three days, while the grafted vines, they can be very early or very late to the average because of the temperature or the climate conditions. This consistency, it's very special to me. It's something very distinctive for those plants. And it's not a question of age. Contrada Contro is 1976 vineyard. And those were planted end of 19th century, early 20th century, 20th century. So they're a little more than 100 years old, but we're not talking about young vines. For me, it's not a question of young versus old, but it's a question of grafted versus un-grafted. 

Mike - Our second question I want to know about planting more of these vines because I understand that you are now after having restored successfully some plants that you are looking to plant some new vineyards. So yeah, I'd love to hear how you do that. How you whether you plant them together or do you do the tree first and then the vine? How do you fight philloxera? All these questions are I'm thinking about with planting a new vineyard of this type. So we'd love to hear about that. 

Andrea - Yeah. So yeah, thanks for the question, Mike. Because it's very interesting also to talk about what I'm doing, you know, after. the restoration of these vines. I have now my, I made my own nursery. So a couple of years ago, I made a massale selection of the, while I was pruning. And I basically just planted the cuts. I tried to make, you know, one meter cut and made some holes in the ground, just next to the vine trees. And I... And I planted them and irrigated them, you know, with a drop irrigation system. And in the next year, I'm about to move them, you know, so I made my own nursery and then I will start replanting them with, uh, with maple trees. Um, I would like to focus first, uh, on the maple and why the maple is chosen over other, other trees. The first thing is that the maple has no competition because it doesn't make any fruit. That's a thing. So it's a living tutor for the vine that can really just enjoy its presence. And it's also very useful for the pruning because it's like, you know, guys, it's like basically growing a pergola, but without having the poles, but just using the branches of the tree as your own pergola. So when I make the pruning, I make these long branches and I make like a crown using the... the branches of the tree and I make this long, the long branches. Then the second thing, so the first is the fact that there's no competition. The second is that the leaves of the maple trees come out a couple of weeks before the bud break. So the leaves of the maple tree, they start protecting the bud breaks from predators like birds or. or even hail storms, which can happen when you're so close to the mountains. Then there's a third thing, which is the rooting system of the maple tree. It brings the mushrooms, the mycorrhizae, so you always have this humidity in the soil. I never saw any yellow leaf on any vine trees. In any dry and hot vintage like 2022. So the one that you're having while we're talking. And also the nature of the roots of the maple is relevant because the maple has a top root, which goes very deep down and vertical and it leaves the vines grow all around. And if you consider that you have a plant every 10 meters, in both directions, it means that every vine has 100 square meters for it, for, for himself and to grow the roots. So that's, that's a very important thing. Philoxera, I'm trying to remember all the, all the points that you were talking about. Of course, so phylloxera is a thing, but phylloxera, there's, there's a few things that phylloxera doesn't like. The first is the sandy soils. I'm just down the Monte Sibillini, which are limestone mountains. And so there's a lot of limestone, a lot of calcare in all the soils. That's why the wines will be the ones that I make in general, not just the Vino di Sante, they will always have this salty taste. And the second thing is that all these soils are made of sand and silt, basically. this very small amount of clay, which will be around 2, 3, 4 percent. And that's too low for phylloxera to be successful. So phylloxera doesn't like the, you know, the absence of clay. So it doesn't like sandy and volcanic soils. It doesn't like the altitude. We're talking about, you know, vines that are at 650 meters above sea level because they don't like altitude. They don't, phylloxera doesn't like the cold temperatures. And also Phylloxera doesn't like the distance. You know, when the plants are so far, one from the other, it's very hard for Phylloxera to get to all of them and to kill them. So actually, you know, I never saw those any kind of, you know, sign of Philoxera's presence in that area. 

Mike - And am I guessing as well, this is a very remote place as well? 

Andrea - Yes, it's a very remote place. Of course. Um, there are a few vineyards that then were planted in the 60s and the 70s, they were planted with rootstocks because there's a thing. So sorry if I will, let's say, move away a little bit from the Viti Maritate, but it's part of the story. Because Contrada Contro, I make the Vino di Sante, which is, you know, it's just coming from Malvasia secular vines growing on maple trees, ungrafted but then I also have four vineyards in four different contrada means neighborhood and I make a wine out of each vineyard and the wine takes the name of the contrada where the vineyard is located and there's a reason why there are those vineyards planted in 60s and 70s because what happened after World War two when the Czechs arrived was we didn't we didn't tell that in those fields where our ancestors were planting the vines so far from one from the other. In the middle, they were seeding. They were basically seeding cereals, mainly corn, because the thing is that they needed to leave out of their own work. So they needed to eat, so corn for flour and, you know, of course, bread and pasta and all the stuff, and then wine because they needed to drink wine. because that was a thing they were used to, you know, that was a very cultural thing that we can discuss even later. But then when the tractors arrived after World War II, those plants, they were an obstacle to those tractors that were useful for the labor of the land, you know, and to cut the corn. and for all those kind of works, those vines were an obstacle. So the government of the region was giving money to the farmers in order to have them uproot, these old secular vines, and on a certain moment they were giving money to plant classic vineyards the way we know them. So all those vineyards, I recall that of the 60s and the 70s, they're the outcome of this policy from the government of the region. 

Nelson - I'm curious about how do you plant them? So is the vine planted at the same time with the tree? Because I guess that the tree will grow significantly slower than the vine. So how does the process work? 

Andrea - This document I was talking about, this pamphlet, the Libri del Campagnolo, I found actually a trace of how to plant a married vine. What you need is a three-year-old maple tree. In the past, more than 100 years ago, they were also using other trees like the Olmo, but the Olmo has a parasite that kills him and kills the vines too. So the maple tree is the most secure one. So if you take a three year old maple tree, what our ancestors were doing, they were just then making a hole close to it, 1.5 meters deep. Then they were putting stones for the drainage of water. And then since they had no money to buy the vines, they were just going to a neighbor or taking it from another. from another plant, they were cutting, you know, they were making their own massale selection, cutting a long branch and putting it down and putting it on top of the, of the tree, which was already three years, three years old. And then they started growing together. What I read on this book, on this pamphlet of 1913 is that the vine took at least seven years to become productive. I'm not at that point yet. So my small babies in my nursery, they're not producing yet. Maybe we will make a new podcast in a few years and I will tell you how this will be going. 

Nelson - So Andrea, you already luckily introduced our third question, which was we wanted to know a bit more about agroforestry, which is the integration of trees into the farming systems. So I guess back in the day it was used because then you can maximize land. So you have the trees and the vines, and then you can use the rest to farm. The idea is, are you considering restarting agroforestry? Can you talk to us a bit more about it first of all and then can you tell us if you're thinking about doing it again so restarting a system of agroforestry especially not only in the vineyard that you already have but in the one that you're planting and also, if you're not considering this are you thinking about adding some cover crops to add a bit of tension between you know because you have a lot of I guess you have a lot of space between one tree and the other so how can competition come into play? 

Andrea - Yes, totally, Nelson. So, agroforestry is part of our heritage, I would say. It comes from the metallage, from the sharecropping. That was part of the culture because it was part of the agricultural society. So, all the farmers, they were exploiting the land at the maximum of their capacity and they needed to feed their family and they needed to... have their own wine. So that's very, don't forget, you know, that was everything, that was everywhere, you know, not just in Italy, but because if you put aside Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne, you know, the AOC were created in 1935, which is not a long time ago, so agroforestry was a thing a little bit everywhere in Southern Europe and in central Europe too. So I do seed, so I do use agroforestry. I like to seed beans, but not a lot because I also like the, let's say the spontaneous grass. so I just put a few beans during the winter season and then I keep the grass and I just cut it It depends on the period. So I'm not afraid of competition during wintertime, but then when the season is dry, maybe it's better not to have too much competition for the vines, even if their rooting system is so deep that I'm actually not afraid I'm not scared about the competition. But that's a choice. My choice is to keep the grass quite down during the hottest season, just to have a cooler temperature, but not to have too much competition. So the thing is that, and agroforestry is also, let's say our ancestors, they were using that same principles, if you can see that they were seeding corn. So in July, they were cutting the corn. So there was no more competition. for the vine trees. And now we're harvesting, you know, early October, but probably, you know, 100 years ago, they were harvesting in November, maybe mid November. So, this has, you know, this has of course an impact also in how long the season was for the vines. So probably what our ancestors were doing was that, you know, when the corn was done, then the vine had no competition. and could go on and continue. So my idea is to replant the same way with the same distance, so 10 meters of distance between the plants and then seeding. That's going to be a good point to study. I'm not sure I will put corn, but I will keep some cereals and maybe some beans. because they're very good for the nitrogen production and they will maybe help me in the fermentation for the fermentations in the cellar and all the stuff. But I don't like, personally, I don't like the vineyards with high density vineyards. It's not something I like because it's something that we're really obliged to plant. to do because again, the plants, if you just leave a vine grow, it will go very, very high. And we just basically train them the way we want them to be. I don't think it's the best, maybe it's not the best way. And again, we were talking about global warming, we were talking about new conditions. I think this is of course an opportunity. That's an opportunity to have maybe a bigger production from each plant. In my opinion, low yields are over for central, southern Italy. You cannot pretend to lower the yield too much because otherwise you will get too much alcohol. much sugars and you know you can't pretend to make photons per hectare as you were doing maybe in the 90s trying to concentrate that much. So agroforestry of course it has something philosophical because of course you have more respect of the land, you don't exploit them that much and it also for me makes sense in terms of what the plant will give you in terms of quality. 

Mike - I just have to jump in there and say, I completely agree, Andrea, in the sense that I feel so much of what we think is correct about viticulture is based on 20th century ideas from, let's face it, France, from marginal climates where they were struggling to ripen the grapes. And this is just not true everywhere for making the best and most appropriate wine. And nevertheless, people around the world sort of try and do that as if it's some kind of badge of honor. But much more interesting is to explore the region and the history of where you are and for the present day what's going to work which is well very encouraging that you're working along these lines in my opinion. 

Andrea - And it's also you know again Mike it's also cultural in that area So of the Monti Sibillini where I'm the only vintner is that It's very common to have trees in the vineyards even in the vineyards of the 60s and the 70s that I recovered There are trees in the vineyards and there are cherry trees or there are olive trees, you know, so or plums or peaches because the, you know, that was the mindset of our grandparents, you know, or our ancestors. It was to also have something else, you know, because that is that is the thing, you know, that's the main thing, you know, the culture of fine wine, it's very recent, you know. If we put aside the three regions I was talking about, so Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne, wine has always been a cultural thing. So even to sacrifice a few plants, because when you have a tree, then you have a lot of shadow and I have some vines that are just under the cherry trees or the plum trees, they will not produce a lot because of the competition, because the trees will drain the resources. But our grandfathers, they were fine with that. They were fine if a few plants were not producing, you know, the amount they could have produced because they were also having something else, you know? And that's very precious to me. And that's the way I wanna see it, you know? And that's the way I wanna think and the way I wanna live this heritage. 

Mike - So that was us with Andrea Polidoro of Contrada Contro, we were tasting his 100% Malvasia from very old vines and the three questions were about restoring abandoned vines on maple trees, second question was how to plant these new vineyards in the same way and the question three was the reasons for and the future of agroforestry with respect to viticulture. So thank you very much Andrea and delicious wine. Cheers. 

Andrea - Thank you very much Mike, thank you very much Nelson and cheers everybody.