Modus vivendi cilentano
Dear Jurnale, this year we arrived at Christmas and as always I write you two lines.
This time I would like to talk to you about Wine, which has much in common with Cotto, more than you think: both are born of the earth and its History, are the balance of the 4 elements and above all are sons of Man and his strength of will, not to mention his stubbornness.
In Campania, there are large wineries, many of which are in the Cilento area. And it is precisely a Cilento winery that I want to tell you about: Cantine Luigi Maffini.
How did the winery come about? I’ll tell you in the words of Luigi Maffini himself:
Our adventure began in the early 1970s, when my father, as a hobby, planted the first vineyard in the family estate in Castellabate. It was 1974 and at the time I was just a child, but I well remember the euphoria of the first harvest at the Maffini house. At that time it was just a game, but in the early 1990s, with a degree in my pocket in Agricultural Sciences and a specialization in Oenology, I decided to get involved myself and I do it with determination and a drawer full of dreams. It was fundamental for me to share the project and those dreams with my wife Raffaella, “determined and tenacious” as only women know how to be!
Luigi and Raffaella Maffini were among the protagonists of the revival of the Cilento viticulture of the 1990s when they started producing wines from organic viticulture with a certified method.
Sustainability has always been an objective to be pursued (also due to our professional training), but over the years we have increasingly convinced ourselves that giving back to the vine and soil their natural balance was inextricably linked to the quality of our wines. Biological conduction, for us, is not a tool but rather a real weapon thanks to which our wines can be expressed, in an even more profound and authentic way; for us, organic farming means putting ‘the earth’ back at the center of all our choices.
As you can imagine the wines of the Cellar are all DOP Cilento and are born from two vineyards, a historic one in Castellabate, not far from the sea and another in Giungano, in the hills, where today there is also the new cellar surrounded by nature with a Modena cellar. But what is special about Cilento?
Cilento has welcomed us, pampered and conquered us with its colors, flavors, silence and its being metaphorically far away from everything else – a great strength! A land of harsh and wild character that was not immediately revealed to our eyes, but slowly we realized that the realization of our goals had a single common denominator: the strength and expressive power proper to that land. So our commitment in trying to harmonize everything that surrounds us, to seek the beauty of the territory, to protect nature has become a real modus vivendi.
The passion that Luigi and Raffaella put into each bottle is something special.
We love all our wines because in each of them there is a piece of our life, the curiosities, the anger, the disappointments … We wanted them, thought them, expected today we observe them with timid eyes, but with the pride of who is aware that they are ‘unique and true’.
However, my dear Jurnale, now I leave you because we are preparing the last year-end furnace and there are a thousand things to do, but I greet you as always with the phrase dear to us “what has been will be”.
Ah, I was going to forget it: Merry Christmas.