Work in the Winery

Interview with Marco Pignotti
«Our restructuring process will project the winery into the future, to face the challenges that lie ahead. The work is highly innovative: the investment planned will usher in technologies to bring about improvements in the production process, while at the same time enabling energy savings. It will also increase the quality and safety of our working environments, reducing the number of workdays of human resources so that their time can be used more effectively in other business processes.»

These were the words of our winemaker, Marco Pignotti, who we met for an interview to talk about the restructuring our vinification department has been undergoing over the past few months.
Question: Marco, when did the work in the winery begin and why?
Marco Pignotti: The work began in June 2021. The goal is to restructure the Winery to ensure it can efficiently meet the challenges ahead.
Q: What is the goal of this restructuring? 
MP: We’re doing it to achieve various goals. The first is to improve the production process and raise product quality by boosting the efficiency of the red wine vinification department and the battery of tanks for storing and fermenting white wines, making our processes even more sustainable and reducing costs. Vinifiers and tanks have been installed with pockets and bands for refrigeration, along with pumps for the remontage process, all of which is managed and monitored using software with 4.0 technology. This process has also given us the opportunity to install lighting fixtures with LED technology in line with the latest health and safety regulations. The improvements to the Winery’s structure also involve the functional and energetic restructuring of the building that forms the enclosure of the vinification tanks, the external processing yard, the sewer line and the crusher tanks; a photovoltaic system of around 60kW was also installed on the roof of the structure.
Q: What funds are being used to finance this work? 
MP: For these operations, we were granted access to funds from OCM Vino, which grants subsidies for wine producers. In Italy, the body operates with annual calls for tenders issued by the Ministry for Agricultural Policies and each Italian Region or Autonomous Province, with 40% to 80% non-repayable grants.
Q: How will our wines improve?
MP: Since the 2021 harvest, we have already been able to take advantage of some of these new technologies, such as temperature-controlled fermentation for all red wines, which had been unthinkable until now. This way, we were able to preserve the aromatic precursors as much as possible and increase the smoothness of the wines themselves.
Q: What tangible changes will this work bring about in terms of local and social value? 
MP: The intrinsic increase in the quality of the wine will mean that we are better able to sell our products and branch into new national and international markets, so as to consolidate our production and the livelihoods of our members’ businesses. At the same time, we will raise the quality of working environments and ensure a lower impact on the land What will change for members when the new plant is fully operational?
MP: It will be increasingly important to plan the harvesting calendar and engage member companies through our Field Technicians so that we are harvesting similar vines during similar periods. This will enable us to make the most of the technologies we use.

Thank you Marco, now let’s taste the reds from the 2021 vintage.