COMPANY’s PHILOSOPHY

The present management started in 1998, after the death of the founders, Mr. Ezio Scienza and his wife Mrs. Giuseppina.
Since the first years of vine cultivation and wine-making, at VALLAROM we have always been experimenters both on the farmland and in the cellar, but the agronomic management has always been of a conventional type.
When I took my grandparents’ place, after attending the Agricultural College “San Michele all’Adige”, having important experiences in Burgundy (France), Tuscany (Italy), Germany and U.S.A., I realized that we must step back to a more environment-friendly vine-growing free from any highly intrusive chemistry, to a “true” produce, really “son” of the environment, of the territory, of my hands and of the seasons.
This originated the need to change products and defenses against the major diseases and to look for a better balance in the country, as we cannot forget that “wine is mainly made on the farmland”. So I moved, step by step, towards a more environment-friendly management, well aware of the fact that it’s not possible to shift, overnight, from a traditional cultivation to a biological one: the trees could not bear it and it would not be possible to create a right balance between production and territory; everybody must fit: myself first. One has always to keep one’s balance and for this reason I have tried to match my various experiences and my “modern” scientific knowledge with the naturalness of respectful vine cultivation and wine making; for instance, I will never say that my wines do not contain sulphurous anhydride, which actually is naturally developed during fermentation; I can say that I try to add as little as possible and only when it is strictly required. World is polluted everywhere and I think that we all should be committed to change it without reaching useless and meaningless exasperations. In this spirit I set off, obviously also attending classes and trying to understand what is better for my type of soil, climate and plants.
Since the beginning, in 1999, I abolished the chemical weeding and, as my experience and symbiosis with the territory of Vallarom grew, though undersigning the “Memorandum of Understanding” of the Wine Producers’ Union of Trentino (the only example in Italy) that limits, also in the traditional vine cultivation, many highly toxic products, I decided not to use other synthesis chemicals for the phytosanitary defense, starting from the antibotritic ones to finish in 2004 with the use of copper and sulphur only. The defense treatments are made only under favorable climate conditions, i.e. no wind (which, on the contrary, is quite constant in our area), to avoid useless waste of product, at mild evening temperatures to avoid burning and with dry leaves. We looked for a better balance on the soil by shifting from the chemical manuring to the organic one and, recently, to the green manure technique. I continued with the “sexual confusion” to control the moth, I created natural traps, such as old shoots tied to the pole tops to provide the cicada with a den, thus preventing it from settling in the vine shoots, I use willow instead of ropes or wires, grapes are harvested by hand, put into small bins and immediately brought to the cellar.
I left uncultivated areas between one vineyard and the other, with self-sown vegetation, dry stone walls which represent an ideal habitat for many animals. The same philosophy and sensitivity to a more sustainable and natural agriculture has been applied to oenology by gradually giving up selected yeasts (with the exception of some special years), enzymes and malolactic bacteria, enhancing the natural events and using very few machines: I have got only one pneumatic press and two pumps, out of which one of a peristaltic type with a very accurate delivery system which permits to save power without stressing the wine. In a bottle one can smell and taste all the shades coming from the microclimate, the soil composition, my personality and, obviously, from the different seasonal trends
Besides being the Company’s management philosophy, this has become an actual life style for myself and my family: when shopping we prefer biologic products, we try to avoid non-recyclable items and to pollute as little as possible.
Also for this reason we have equipped the farm, that is also our home, with solar panels and a last generation wood stove to produce power and hot water for the activity and ourselves.
Also for the packaging we are moving to recycled paper for the labels, to thinner but darker glass bottles to reduce the emission of CO2 in production and transportation and to better protect our natural produce.
This applies also to our suppliers who, over the years, have been selected also according to their production processes, which should be environment-friendly and based on recycled raw materials. Our web site provides, for each wine and year, detailed technical data sheets showing the various processing steps and, when required, the products used for their making.
Transparency is our philosophy as our wine reflects our personality, our image and our territory.