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Home > CANADA > Spotlight
STEFANO COLOMBINI: BRUNELLO, MY PASSION
Rome - (Ign) - "Tradition, culture, territory: the Brunello of the Fattoria dei Barbi is a product with two centuries of history. This is its secret". This is how Stefano Cinelli Colombini talks of the Fattoria dei Barbi (www.fattoriadeibarbi.it) and his business. With 760,000 bottles of wine produced in 2005, turnover of €10.8m and 70 employees, the Fattoria is one of the most active business realities in the sector of winemaking. The company exports 22.1% of its produce, and the two main markets are the USA and Canada. Owned by the Colombini family since 1352, it is also one of the main tourist attractions in the province of Siena (with over 70,000 visitors per year), allowing visitors to book guided tasting tours of the historic cellars, which preserve precious bottles dating back to 1870. But it is also possible to stay in the farm holiday centre, try real Tuscan cooking in the tavern, purchase cured meats from the pork butcher's and cheeses from the dairy, produced according to ancient local traditions.
Your company is two centuries old (and your mother is known as "lady Brunello"), and works in an extremely competitive sector in which quality counts above all else. How is it possible to survive in such a market?
The Fattoria dei Barbi is the 50th largest Italian company in the wine sector in terms of turnover, and the largest of those that are family-run: excellent results cannot be achieved without strong roots in the territory. We have been producing wine for over a century, today with significant investments in technology, but have always realised that our core business is closely linked to local tradition. This deep bond recently led to the opening of the first Museum of the Montalcino Community and Brunello. Housed in the ancient stables of the Fattoria dei Barbi, it reconstructs the daily life and activities of the community, obviously dedicating significant space to wine making. Basically, we are well aware that, despite being the second largest company of Montalcino in terms of size and one of the largest producers of Brunello, we cannot compete with the market giants if we present ourselves only as a company, but we can if we manage to focus on our local roots and to make our culture and history emerge. This is the way forward.
How important is research in your sector and what risk is there of perverting the nature of a product as 'natural' as wine?
My company is at the forefront from the technological point of view: I'm studying with the University of Pisa a system which makes it possible to recreate optimal harvesting conditions. The result is the PMF (Cold Pre-Maceration) project of 2001, which makes it possible to obtain more than double the quantities of Brunello, at the same time retaining the same typical characteristics, flavours and aromas of the Sangiovese di Montalcino grape. In my opinion there is no risk of 'moving away from nature': fermentation is in any case a technological process, even if it is 2000 years old. If anything, the danger we need to avoid is that of losing the product's aroma and flavour. The problem that the machine solved was a result of early harvest, which led to us having grapes that were too "hot". With the use of dry ice in the pre-fermenting phase we recreate the climate that characterised the best harvests of past decades, using a completely natural method for the first time applied to a prized red grape like Sangiovese. And the result is clearly superior.
Your sector is characterised by a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises. Is it better for companies to join forces in consortiums to exploit scale economies or to remain as they are?
Entrepreneurial dwarfism is a real and serious problem; we already belong to trade consortiums such as that of Brunello, which spends 70% of its €3m turnover for promotion of the wine. But more could surely be done from the point of view of organisation, such as in the field of bottling and packaging; at present, each company has its own machinery, and this involves significant costs in every sense. But we will get there in the end.
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