You Can Just Feel It

What does it actually mean to make wine?

And I don’t mean in the technical sense, there are textbooks for that. But in the lived sense: the daily rhythm of it, the things that keep you up at night, the moments that make you glad you chose this over something easier. Or maybe this is easier than what you were doing before.

Over the past year, TerraVino has had the privilege of spending time with the people behind our portfolio: winemakers, directors, fourth-generation family members, sales representatives who have spent decades carrying bottles across the world. We asked them about their days, their fears, their favourite moments, and what they are proudest of. What emerged was not a single story about what it means to make wine, but several overlapping ones, each shaped by a different person, a different terroir, a different relationship with the land.

But something is very common: their passion.
It shows in how they talk about what they do, their past, what they like to drink, that smile when they remember details and moments that are important and they hold dear.

Those Who Started It All

Every estate in our portfolio began with a decision made by someone who, in most cases, couldn't fully see where it was going.

Antonio Tessari hand-dug the first cellar of what is now Cornelia Tessari in 1933, in the volcanic hills of Soave, and planted a single hectare of Garganega. Orlando Trambusti opened a small wine storehouse in Greve in Chianti in 1934; not a winery, he was not a producer, just a merchant with good taste and a belief that Tuscany's wines deserved better distribution. Alibrando Dei bought a parcel of land in Bossona in 1964 and planted the first vineyard, selling the grapes to others for twenty years before his son Glauco made the first barrel of Vino Nobile in 1985. Marisa Chiappini arrived in Bolgheri in 1953 as a child, part of a family of migrant farmworkers who came west looking for something better, and stayed (we talked about her here).

The Tessari family: Nick and Cornelia on the right.

In Sambuca di Sicilia, in the western hills of the island, the Di Giovanna family has been making wine for roughly 150 years. Gunther Di Giovanna (whose German first name reflects a Sicilian father and a German mother, one of those personal details that quietly signals how porous the island's identity has always been) told me the founding story with such evident delight, his face glowing and an enticing proud grin. His great-grandfather had a large farm and many things growing on it, but wine was always the most important. Gunther has a brother, who eventually moved to Tuscany and started his own winery there. Every year, the two brothers would swap a bottle and decide who had made the better wine. "He was considered a traitor by the family," Gunther says, laughing. The roots of that competition – two siblings, two regions, one obsession – are still alive in the estate that Gunther now runs with his brother Klaus. We'll start bringing in their wines soon, stay tuned!

Gunther and Klaus Di Giovanna.

And then there is Salvatore Di Gaetano.
Salvatore grew up in Paceco, in the Trapani province of western Sicily, from a family with roots in the land. His wife Vinzia Novara came from a similar background; another family with property, another generation that had watched the island's agricultural economy export its best raw material to the north in bulk, anonymously, for other people's labels. In 1978, the two of them decided to do something different. They founded Firriato (if you want to know more, check out this article) with the specific intention of making something from this land rather than simply extracting from it.

The Sicily they were working in was not the Sicily that exists today. In the 1970s, the island's wine economy was almost entirely oriented toward bulk production: high yields, high alcohol, anonymous blends shipped north to France and northern Italy to add body to thinner wines: a clear case of quantity over quality. The idea of bottling Sicilian wine under a Sicilian label and selling it as something worth paying attention to was, at best, optimistic.

Salvatore and Vinzia built slowly, step by step: in the early 1980s they brought enologists to Sicily to understand what was working, what wasn't, and what the territory was genuinely capable of. They were not alone in this instinct, many were taking inspiring action and making similar moves (Diego Planeta at the cooperative SetteSoli, Giacomo Tachis at Donnafugata, and more). Each producer was working independently, but the collective effect was a shift (slow at first, then faster) away from bulk and toward identity.

The cooperative model tells a parallel story. In Ruvo di Puglia, the Cantina di Ruvo (commonly known as Crifo) was founded on the same basic principle: that farmers working together could protect the quality and value of their land in ways that individual growers selling to industrial buyers could not. Cooperatives like this one are sometimes dismissed as less interesting than family estates, and the dismissal is unfair. The decision to pool resources, to collectively invest in quality rather than volume, to say that this land and these grapes are worth more than the price the bulk market will pay… that decision requires exactly the same conviction as any individual founding story. It is just made by many people at once (we talked about it here).

What You Inherit

The people we spoke to did not, for the most part, start anything. They continued something.

Nick Tessari is the fourth generation of Cornelia Tessari, a winery whose name belongs to two women: the original Cornelia, wife of founder Antonio Tessari, who stood alongside him when he hand-dug that first cellar in 1933; and her granddaughter, also named Cornelia, who now runs the estate with her brothers Antonio and Germano. Nick joined the export and business development side alongside his wife, Taylor, after moving back from Canada, making him, technically, the nephew of the woman who gave the winery its name, though the age gap between them is small enough that the generational label feels almost beside the point. He describes the family structure plainly: "We all have our roles, but we wear different hats throughout the day. Right now I'm talking to you, but very soon I'll be cutting grass, and maybe this afternoon I'll be visiting clients."
The stamp of approval from his father, he admits with a laugh, is still pending.

Tommaso Trambusti joined Chianti Trambusti in 2013, following his father Giacomo into sales. His brother Lorenzo is studying oenology and will eventually take charge of production. The company was founded by their great-grandfather Orlando in 1934 and only became an estate producer in 2005 when the family bought Tenuta Poggio ai Mandorli, a beautiful estate in hills around Greve In Chianti. Before that, for seventy years, Trambusti was a merchant operation: selecting, bottling, distributing. The decision to produce was itself an inheritance of a different kind: the accumulated credibility and knowledge of three generations of people who had spent their lives understanding what Tuscan wine could be.

At Firriato, the inheritance is now in its second generation. Vinzia Di Gaetano spent decades as the face of the winery – travelling internationally, representing Sicilian wine at a moment when it was still earning its reputation – before stepping back about ten years ago and passing her role to their daughter Irene and Irene's husband Federico Lombardo di Monte Iato. Salvatore, who founded the company in 1978, is still at the head of it. Still present. Still, by all accounts, in love with the work; I even met them briefly at their estate in Baglio Soria in May. These details are worth sitting with for a moment: a man and a woman who built something from nothing, in a region where building anything seemed improbable, are still there decades later, present and observing. It says something about what this industry does to the people who choose it seriously.

Gunther Di Giovanna is a most unusual case, and in some ways the most instructive. He did not come back to the family winery naturally or gradually. He built an entirely different life first: years as a human resources manager for large companies, working in Rome, then Milan, then Naples, before walking away at around 30 to return to Sicily and the land his great-grandfather had farmed. The decision was not made under pressure. "I decided to interrupt my career to dedicate myself, with all my energy, to produce wine, to be in the tradition of the family, to respect my territory, to preserve it."

The Di Giovanna winery in Sambuca di Sicilia

Di Giovanna has been certified organic since 1997 (28 years without interruption) and their stated purpose is as clear as anything we heard across all these conversations: "My target is just one: to leave this territory better than I received from my parents."

Not to grow the brand, nor to win awards: to leave it better.

Vittoria Saby at Il Quinto is a different kind of case, that of a parental inheritance. Her father Rémi bought the estate in 2016 and it was his dream (their fantastic story is here); Vittoria is the one who stayed to run it day to day while her sister moved to Geneva. She is frank about the division: "She thinks about babies. I think about the baby bottles of wine." She is also frank about who makes the wines. "I'm very proud to say it's Valentina making the wines. A lot of wineries should embrace more who is actually making the wine." It is a small but pointed observation about an industry that has a habit of conflating ownership with authorship.

A Year in the Vineyard

One of the most curious parts of the conversations I had, was understanding how does one spend the day at a winery – whether as winemaker, owner, or both.

The answer, from almost everyone, is: it depends on the day. And the day depends on the weather.

Serena Gusmeri, winemaker, agronomist, and artist (yes, wine is art) at Vecchie Terre di Montefili in Panzano in Chianti, grew up in Brescia, trained in oenology at the University of Verona, wrote her thesis in Australia, spent time in Franciacorta specialising in sparkling wine, then moved to Campania where she worked with indigenous varieties (Biancolella on Ischia, Fiano and Greco in Benevento) before arriving at Montefili in 2015 having never made a red wine in her life. She is the only female winemaker among the 26 producers in Panzano. She lives ten minutes from the estate, and the day starts with taking her kid to school, then straight to the vineyard. From April to October, she is outdoors every day: choosing shoots, monitoring humidity, tracking the health of each parcel. "I have to split myself between winery, vineyard, and office. Never boring, and yet never fully in control." You can read about Montefili here.

Valentina Del Bello, the winemaker at Tenuta Il Quinto in Maremma, trained across Bordeaux, Burgundy, and New Zealand's Central Otago before Rémi Saby found her at Château Latour and persuaded her to come to a territory with no established rulebook. She describes this as the main point: "Compared to zones like Chianti Classico or Montalcino, where the style of wine and the type of viticulture are already defined by regulations and history, this territory lets you explore all possible paths, from the choice of varieties to the style of the wine." For Valentina, that freedom is not a void, but rather a challenge that requires exactly the experience she spent years building elsewhere.

Valentina Del Bello and Vittoria Saby from Tenuta Il Quinto.

Both women share a philosophy that surfaces in different words across almost every conversation we had: the winery is the last step. The year happens outside, in the vineyard, in the decisions about when to prune and when to spray and when to wait. Serena is the most precise about what that means at harvest. She begins sampling every parcel of Sangiovese a full month before picking, returning weekly, tracking alcohol and acidity, but also texture and the colour inside the seeds. "For Sangiovese, you need a crunchy, wooden brown colour inside the seed. If it's a little bit green, the taste will be heavier." Science and feeling, in equal measure. Not something you learn from books.

The Harvest

Now, with all this passion, people would go crazy; which is why focus is what keeps them from it: the ability to concentrate eleven months of work into a few critical weeks without losing their heads.

Ask any winemaker what scares them and the answer is almost always the same. It’s not about technical failures or market pressures: it’s the weather.

Serena recalls waking up the morning after a violent hailstorm hit Panzano a few years back, driving to Montefili terrified she had lost the harvest, and finding the vineyard untouched while the land behind the road had been stripped bare. "That trip was a good exercise in patience. Mother Nature is stronger than us." She laughs. "When I saw the harvest was safe, I opened more than one bottle of wine!"

Serena Gusmeri of Vecchie Terre Di Montefili.

Valentina is also very systematic: "You work eleven months of the year and then concentrate all the results into a few weeks. The weather (frost, hail, last-minute changes during harvest) that is the number one enemy. The ones you predict are the simplest to manage. The ones you don't see coming are where experience makes the difference. Knowing how to read the sky, the wind, to sense how the day will turn – having that history is everything."

Giulia Bozzi, who handles sales at PodereSette in Bolgheri and studied winemaking and oenology in Siena before joining the estate, names harvest as her favourite moment of the year for the same reason it is the most nerve-racking. "It's when we have the result of all the work we've done all year. The most important moment, and the most exposed."

Exposure seems to be the keyword here: everything that happened in the vineyard, every decision, every observation, every early morning and late evening, arrives at this moment without the possibility of revision. You either read the year correctly, or you didn't.

The Release

After harvest comes the release, and I use this word deliberately because I love the ambiguity it takes in this context.

Harvest means pressure, fast-paced hard work, fear; once that is done, and especially if it went well, there is a sense of peace, as if you were released from the grip of the full year of hope.

But, in more practical terms, release also means the cellar, the barrel, the wait, and then the moment the wine leaves your hands and is presented to the world.

Tommaso Biagiotti, who represents Cantine Dei internationally, describes the release as the day he loves most in the entire cycle. "I love following the whole path, tasting the grape when it arrives, tasting during fermentation, from the barrel, from the bottle. And when we release, it's the day I love most, because I'm excited to see the result of the path the wine followed." What he loves equally is what comes next: the people who receive it. "We receive visitors from all over the world: Australia, Canada, South America, Asia. That exchange of ideas I really love."

Freshly labelled wine bottles at Cantine Dei.

Carlo Mazzuoli, the oenologist at PodereSette, learned something in his university years that he has never forgotten. His professor used to say: "The best wine is the one that finishes first." He means it. "I hope that when people drink our wines, they move quickly to the second glass. Not because the first wasn't good, but because it was."

Alessandra Tessari, from Cantine di Monteforte, grew up in the Soave area, left to study Japanese in Japan, came back with what she calls "foreign eyes," and found her way into the wine industry through the realisation that she had been carrying her culture abroad without quite naming it. Her favourite memory is the cooperative’s 70th anniversary celebration in 2022: all the cooperative's winegrowers gathered at a restaurant, eating together, "because a cooperative is made by its winegrowers." Imagine the emotions of all those growers, descendants of farmers, together like a single large family, celebrating what I can only refer to as strength through unity. It must have been a sight to behold.

And yet her real satisfaction is smaller and more frequent than that: "When I see people from Asian culture enjoying these wines, when they tag us on Instagram to show me they are tasting… it's a really good feeling. I share my culture and my world, and they appreciate it."

The wine, once it leaves, becomes someone else's story. That, it turns out, is the point.

The Long Game

Now, while passion gets you through the harvest, it is a strong vision that gets you through a decade (and more).

Nearly everyone we spoke to had something they were building toward, not just maintaining. Gunther's purpose – to leave the land better than he received it – is as precise as a business plan: a specific, measurable, long-term goal, one that will take longer than a single life to verify.

Nick Tessari is building toward CO2 neutrality by 2028 through a reforestation and replantation programme. Their winery has been certified organic since 2018, FIVI certified, all wines vegan; these are commitments made not because the market asked them, but because a fourth-generation winemaker decided it was the right thing to do, and then built a plan around that decision. "Nothing in our winery is purchased from outside. Every single step from the field to the final bottle is handled by us: us five in the family."

Aldo Tessari, Nick's grandfather.

To me that is not about quality, but rather a statement about what kind of company they intend to be, and who they intend to remain.

Similarly, Salvatore and Vinzia founded Firriato with a specific counter-thesis to the prevailing Sicilian wine economy: that the land was worth more than the bulk market was paying for it. Forty-five years later, the company has 490 hectares across seven estates and Europe's first zero-emission certification. That did not happen through passion alone. It happened because someone looked at an undervalued territory, made a long-term bet on what it could become, and stayed the course long enough to find out if they were right.

The difference between a winery that lasts a generation and one that lasts four is almost never talent alone. It is almost always the clarity of what you are trying to do (something that also evolves in time), and the discipline to keep doing it when the season goes wrong.

The wine in a glass is the end of a very long process. Most of it happened outside, in the cold or the heat, months or years before. Much of it was managed by someone you will never meet, making decisions that won't pay off until after you've forgotten you made them.

Next time you open a bottle, it is worth spending a moment with that.