Wine into the future according to Marcello Lunelli

I AM n.8 has its focus on wine and all the processes that lead it towards the future. We talked about it with Marcello Lunelli, Vice President and CTO of Cantine Ferrari.

Wine, for all of us lovers of the Bacchus nectar, is an integral part of the cultural, enogastronomic and tourism heritage of Italy and many other countries. It shapes our landscapes and is part of thousands of years of human history. Many people know it, appreciate it, and taste it in moderation. In the past decade, wine has been enriched with numerous other meanings beyond its intrinsic organoleptic and sensory characteristics.

Wine culture has lived and developed through a solid tradition.

Oscar Wilde used to say it, “tradition is a successful innovation.” It applies in all fields, even in the only seemingly traditionalist field of quality winemaking. Process and governance innovation is the driver that allows wine to meet the new challenges that the market proposes, challenges of growth and development in harmony with the “world,” following the principles of sustainability in its three pillars: environmental, social and economic. Hence, comes the ever-increasing attention to the health of the land and people, through the reduction of the use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and herbicides, favoring natural substances and healthy cultivation methods, in favor of renewed soil fertility and defense of biodiversity.

It is also crucial to rationalize and reduce water use, thanks to modern, even satellite, technologies for monitoring and distributing consumption. These established practices, together with the selection of new rootstocks that are more efficient in managing the water resource during the vine growing cycle, aim to better address the ongoing climate change issue. 

The sustainable revolution is also accomplished in the reduction of CO2 through the establishment of photovoltaic systems or by using renewable energy sources.

These are just some of the best practices, which are essential for looking to the future. Along with the environment, equally important for the virtuous management of the enterprise is the social dimension: here, the defense of employees’ rights, the development of corporate welfare, and occupational health and safety are the protagonists. Last but not least, the economic dimension, that is, the maintenance of solid economic parameters that allow the winery to operate with the necessary serenity to the implementation of strategic plans increasingly focused on sustainability and business ethics.

If in the past the entrepreneur wondered “how can” the business prosper, today the imperative is about “what is right to do” by introducing an ethical dimension to doing business.

Only in this way what the company achieves, at a time in history when the earth’s resources are increasingly scarce, responds to the questions that the market, the consumer, and the community are asking about production dynamics. Here, then, the entrepreneurial vision changes, evolves, and the company must not be limited to the creation of shareholder value, but must generate well-being, safety, and beauty for those who work there and for the community that hosts it, demonstrating social responsibility and a strong focus on the environment. 

Wine will have a future if it can be beautiful, good, well made, sustainable and fair.

A wine that is beautiful, that is, capable of conveying the exclusivity of the territory that generates it and where a wine tourism that privileges the human experience is developed; still good, because it is made according to the most modern, efficient and effective technologies; well made, thanks to the harmony of all the production factors; sustainable in its environmental and social dimensions; and fair, that is, one that guarantees respect and dignity to those who create it, contributes with awareness to communicating a unique and unrepeatable identity. A wine that is the fruit of innovation, but faithful, from harvest to harvest, to the uniqueness of its organoleptic result, that always knows how to express the tradition, territoriality, and typicality that have made it famous and that, with every sip, sends us back to its origins, in which to find emotions, recognizability, memorability, excellence.