We are (still) the world champions. For the third time – not consecutive but in the last three odd years, 2015, 2017 and 2019 – a Ferrari Trentodoc was voted the best sparkling wine in the world: the coveted title of "Sparkling Wine Producer of the Year", the highest international recognition for bubbles and awarded a few weeks ago, therefore saw the historic Trentino winery, founded in 1902 by Giulio Ferrari when Trento was still under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and taken over in 1952 by the Lunelli family, prevail over the French, inventors of champagne and represented by the prestigious Maison Louis Roederer. The rivalry with the transalpines now sees us fighting as equals, after a long pursuit that began in the 90s, when Ferrari was the second brand in the world – after Champagne – to boast the DOC recognition for the classic method, or that universally applied for the production of sparkling wine.
Over time, this product of Italian excellence has also been able to establish itself abroad, where however the market still rewards the French: "Today we sell 80% in Italy and 20% abroad and maintaining this proportion is also a choice, the priority is to consolidate our position”, we are told as we visit the Ferrari winery, on the southern outskirts of Trento. There, where you begin to glimpse some of the vineyards of what Goethe defined, speaking of Trentino, "the most beautiful vineyard garden in Europe", we also discover that of the 50 markets where our top-of-the-range sparkling wine is sold, Japan is becoming the most interesting, and that this year too the harvest should arrive earlier, shortly after August XNUMXth: “Effect of climate change: the great heat tends to bring the harvest closer, even if this year there was a cold and rainy spring”.
The rigor and discipline of the Ferrari method emerge from the phase preceding the harvest and from the very decision on when to do it: the 500 families of winegrowers, scattered throughout Trentino, who confer their harvest must accept the rules imposed by the manufacturer , starting with the organic certification, on pain of losing the Trentodoc label. “Our agronomists sift the vineyards in the summer to monitor the health of the vines and decide, valley by valley, the best moment for the harvest”. Every detail is important and the date must be strictly respected, as well as the subsequent process, which still involves, in 2019, absolutely manual steps: the tens of thousands of bottles kept in the cellar in via del ponte di Ravina (the total annual production reaches 5 million pieces) are kept in the dark and at a fixed temperature of 12 degrees.
Il remuage, i.e. the first operation that is carried out after the period of rest of the wine on the fermentation lees, it is still partly done by hand, by about twenty workers who take turns and follow each delicate step: the bottles, positioned horizontally (as it would be advisable to keep them at home, in cool and dark places), must be freed from the yeasts which settle on the side. To do this, the bottle must be turned on itself a few degrees each time, and progressively inclined so as to let the residues slide towards the neck, where they will be eliminated.
Among the employees, both at the top and in the various stages of production, there are also several members of the Lunelli family: their management has reached the third generation and has expanded the business, with the desire to create a pole of excellence in Italian drinking, beyond the wine. This is why in 1982 Ferrari took over the Segnana brand, historic grappa producer which next year will celebrate 160 years of life, and in 1988 Surgiva water, founded in 1975 and in turn a great Trentino excellence, given that it rises from the nearby Adamello Brenta glacier. The Lunelli family has also ventured into red wine, leaving the borders of Trentino with the acquisition of Casale Podernovo, a wine area in the Tuscan hills. And it also has its own restaurant, the Locanda Margon in Trento, dedicated to haute cuisine and the experimentation of innovative combinations with Trentodoc.
Ferrari, an entirely made in Italy excellence, conquers the world but always remains linked – commercially and culturally – to Italy. Inevitably also to some great moments in our history, including the sporting one, marked by a toast with the most prestigious sparkling wine. How can we forget, for example, the toast between Francesco Cossiga and Mikhail Gorbachev, or those with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and even the very French François Mitterrand. Ferrari has been the wine of Popes, of film stars, of blue expeditions to the Olympics, of the celebrations of the Mundial '82 and of those for the victories of the Ferrari drivers, the car brand with which the Trentino sparkling wine shares the most internationally appreciated of homonyms. The one that perhaps even the French now envy us.
