What people say

Accustomed as we are to living the present at a frantic pace and waiting for the future with impatience, a character like Virgilio Sandoni, today, might seem almost out of time, so distant is his idea of life from the stereotypes that modernity often imposes on us.
When I decided to create this book, I believed that winemakers like him no longer existed—or rather, had never existed at all.
That was not true.

In the hills of Castello di Serravalle, in the locality of Bersagliera, stands the winery of one of the most serious, cultured, passionate, and romantic producers of the entire area.
As often happens, life led him to become a winemaker more by choice than by calculation.

It is 1971. His parents, lifelong farmers and owners—among other plots—of a newly planted one-and-a-half-hectare vineyard, pass away almost at the same time.
Virgilio, fresh from his studies in Philosophy, finds himself at a dramatic crossroads: continue his father’s work, or abandon everything, complete his studies, and immerse himself in the academic world.
In hindsight, we might say that choosing to remain close to the land was the right decision. But back then, putting ourselves in the shoes of a young man who perhaps knew everything about Plato’s philosophy and nothing about how to prune a vineyard—especially in an era when rural life was being systematically abandoned, the social fabric of the countryside crumbling, and when a secure, well-paid job in the city was not an impossible dream—one can understand why such serious doubts arose.
To this day, Sandoni remembers that choice as one of the most difficult of his life.

And so, suddenly, Virgilio finds himself with pruning shears in hand and a mason’s trowel ready to build his small winemaking cellar.
In 1974 he produces his first wine, made with truly artisanal methods and with grapes that others refused to buy, believing them to be of poor quality, sold only in bulk.
At the time there was no clientele in the area asking for bottled wines, but the quality was very good, and his care for both the vineyard and the winemaking was almost obsessive.
A scrupulous selection of fully ripened grapes and no use of clarifying agents or preservatives did the rest: in just a few years, Sandoni’s wine became among the most appreciated.

Fully aware of the limits of his “oenological knowledge”, he traveled in different periods of the year to understand various techniques, visiting all the great winemaking regions of Italy and France. He was especially struck by the strong similarity between our hills and those of Sauternes.
There, Sauvignon dominates; the vineyards are interspersed with acacia woods, used—as was once done here—to make vineyard stakes; and the altitude and temperatures are similar to those of Castello di Serravalle.

Within him grew a strong desire to create a wine inspired by what our cousins produce, and tasting his Sauvignon matured in barriques, one can easily detect some analogies with Sauternes.

Clients, however, also wanted—and above all—sparkling wines: clear, bright, and flawless.
Somewhat reluctantly and solely to balance the books, Sandoni began producing a sparkling Barbera and Pignoletto and purchased all the most modern equipment for this purpose.

Over the years, his wines, including a barrel-aged Cabernet Sauvignon and Barbera, a still Pignoletto, and a Chardonnay fermented in steel, earned recognition ahead of their time and somewhat against local tastes, though perfectly aligned with the broader international wine scene.

Allergic to excessively cold bureaucratic practices and intolerant of the ignorance of those who try to interfere, limiting his free spirit as a scrupulous and honest entrepreneur—with a character perhaps not the most malleable—and proudly refusing to comply with empty rules that he considered useless for achieving the highest quality, Sandoni decided, beginning with the 2001 harvest, to no longer present his wines as D.O.C., but to reclassify them as I.G.T. “Emilia”.

The same goes for the labels: tired of being told that they were anonymous, that they did not convey his philosophy of production, that they were ugly, one day he decided to take his passport photo and put it on the label of his Chardonnay. Not an act of vanity, but a provocative gesture of great dignity and honesty: “In this bottle, there is me,” it says—my effort, my restlessness, my few certainties, my willingness to engage.

On each of his bottles one finds a phrase by Heraclitus of Ephesus: “For men, that everything they desire should happen is not what is best.”
If we taste his Kaos, a Pignoletto aged in barriques and sparkling with the long Charmat method, or breathe in the scent of his beautiful cellar, we soon realize that, for us, the best thing was that Mr. Virgilio Sandoni once decided to become a philosopher-winemaker.