There is no doubt that in the great epic of the renewal of wine industry, a fundamental role has been played by the newcomers, those entrepreneurs from completely different sectors who have transformed themselves into farmers, winemakers and wine producers. Their inexperience, and the impossibility of drawing on the baggage (but also the burden) of knowledge of their fathers and grandfathers, forced them to act rationally, outside the rhetoric that had been consolidated in the sector, and develop their own technical, stylistic and operational paths. To innovate, in short.

     Thanks to them, new professional figures such as marketing experts, graphic designers, copywriters, communication consultants have entered the world of wine, who have helped to shake up the entire sector and wake up the historic producers who were dozing a little, satisfied with their market position.

     These new protagonists of the wine sector, however, have also distinguished themselves for a particular character trait: a sort of perennial fervor, an ardor of doing that often takes on tones of mystical ecstasy, a total dedication to the new object of their interests. And an uncritical love for the fruit of their work that is always perfect, good, beautiful, capable of holding up and winning any comparison.

     In short, they remind us of certain unrepentant bachelors who at a certain age end up marrying and give birth (them, not their wives) to their first child. Forty-year-olds who go from night club to nursery in the blink of an eye, from tumbler to bottle, from caviar to baby food. Who sell the sport car and buy the station wagon. But, above all, that they end up talking only about that, maniacally and obsessively, no matter who the interlocutor is, friends, relatives, colleagues, customers, or people met by chance.

     Yes, the producers of recent vocation are more fathers than winemakers and, certainly, a large part of their successes is due to the fact that they take care of the vineyard, cellar and wine just like a first child conceived a little late.

     On these vineyards of Orion we seen things you people wouldn't believe: green prunings that are massacres with a sword, cuddles on the vine that a woman's face has never dreamed of receiving, cuts of bunches that look like organ explants rather than harvesting acts, crushing softer than the puff of a cherub, fermentations with a subdued and imperceptible boil, refinements in barrels in which each stave has been tasted as if it were ice cream stick...

     Conception is identified with pruning, pregnancy lasts until September, the harvest is childbirth, and all that follows is growth, weaning, kindergarten, school. From time to time the new producer calls an expert to help him. The agronomist is the gynecologist, the oenologist is the pediatrician. And both order analyses, tests and laboratory tests. So they prescribe treatments and medicines, even some vaccinations, because the heir must be born and grow up beautiful, strong and healthy.

     So far the two figures coincide and the acts, gestures and intentions of the father and the producer proceed parallel allowing us to jump from one to the other with graceful interchangeability. Until something intervenes that distances our two symbolic characters and pushes them down paths that are not only different, even opposite.

     Do we want to remember how much literature this attitude of fathers towards their first child has produced?

     The new wine producer, who is also the father of his wine-son down to the nucleus of each of his cells, as soon as he brings another into the world, betraying the millenary parental vocation, repudiates the firstborn and spends all his energy to accompany, exalt, promote and make the second son triumph. And the following year he will also betray his second son and so on, harvest after harvest.

     Alas, the consideration that the wine of the previous vintage was the best a father-producer could hope for will be of no avail: structure, elegance, complexity, harmony, awards and certificates of excellence from the outside world. All thoughts, energies, skills, are dedicated to the latest born, no matter how it is, how much it is worth, what prospects of success it has. 

     GREEK TRAGEDY AND ITS OPPOSITE

     As in a Greek tragedy in reverse, the father-producer kills the firstborn to leave space, power and glory to the second-born. One wonders why an attitude so contradictory to the established constants of the human soul.

    The attempted answer, unfortunately, could be that that father-producer lives hostage to a sort of multi-headed jellyfish called "market".

     A market that no longer gives space to value, that has made shelf rotation its basic rule, that doesn't care if you still have three thousand excellent bottles of 2023 in the cellar and wants, indeed, demands anything from 2024, even if it's a barrel rinse.

     Those who love good wine are perceiving this discomfort, the lack of calm, of the long times of reflection. He suffers from it and remedies it in his own way, with a practical spirit.

    If the value is expelled from the market, in the sense that fine bottles are given the same commercial life as the sparkling wines of the last harvest, he goes looking for it elsewhere, in the cellars of friends, in the collections of some maniac (blessed! fortunately there are still some), in some restaurant where a naïve sommelier has not been able to "intelligently" manage the turnover of bottles.

     He seeks and restores dignity and life to these modern victims of a renewed massacre of the innocents, guilty only of being firstborn. 

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