Attilio Scienza: Designations to be revised, alcohol contents to be lowered and more

Modification of DOC production specifications, including resistant grape varieties - after an amendment to the Testo Unico that does not allow their use - and rules for sustainability aimed at obtaining certification from the state. These are the urgent actions needed to adapt wines to the new requirements linked to climate change, sustainability and the new organoleptic profiles demanded by the market outlined by Attilio Scienza - among the leading experts in viticulture and professor at the University of Milan - in his role as chairman of the Doc Wines Committee, in his speech at the conference, organized by Uva Sapiens, a consulting firm in the wine sector (“The wine to come. Multidisciplinary contaminations for a necessary evolution”).
The reputation of a wine starts from a necessary condition: the viticultural vocation of the production territory, or at least that is how it should be. Professor Attilio Scienza, in the incipit of his excursus, on the evolution of viticultural vocation turned this assumption on its head by distinguishing the symbolic value of wine and its reification, that is, the transition from an abstract thing to a real thing. “The great reputation in ancient Greece of the wine of Thrace, known as the wine of Dionysus”, illustrated Scienza, who in addition to being a technician is also a personality of great vision and humanist culture, “was not linked to the vocation for viticulture of that territory, moreover cold, but to the amber and tin trades that were certainly more important than wine and to a people of navigator traders, the Phocians, who also organized the communication of this wine. Alongside this were the aspects of production, the choice of grape variety, the form of cultivation, the containers”. In the past, a wine was not famous for its interesting organoleptic characteristics, but for the possibility of being sold. It is no accident that great appellations arise where there are roads and ports, not because of the goodness of the soil, the climate or the ability of the producer. Proof of this is the development of viticulture along the Via Francigena, to refresh those who passed through.
“This is the ambiguity of terroir of which we are still victims”, continued Scienza, “no current appellation, either ours or France’s, has these elements. Is a DOC today myth or reality ? From here we must start to understand what vocation means today. Quality can be done everywhere, it has become a prerequisite. Excellence, which means “pushing out”, is on the sidelines of the quality given by terroir and is substantiated in ethical and aesthetic values, in the value/honesty of those who produce and in the ability to understand it by those who consume. This represents the qualitative leap we need to give to the contents of a terroir. Strategies to return to the original values of the terroir’s vocation are authenticity, understood as the ability to interpret the terroir with a wine, and that is not easy for anyone. In the past, terroirs had only one wine, and that is how it should go back to being: make one wine and make it well. Today there are docs in which 10-20 wines are made: only one is authentic the others serve to broaden the offer to cover all drinking occasions. The weaker an appellation the more wines it contemplates. The word that defines the value of a terroir is “truth”. In Greek, it means to make visible that which is invisible, in our case those who make wine conscientiously “bring out”, make evident the terroir; in Latin, it means wall, defense from things that are wrong, so we can say that truth is referable to the label that tells what is in that bottle. Over time we have confused between innate quality, that of a viticultural environment, of a terroir, and acquired quality that refers to transformation in the cellar. We have given more importance to the latter, making a mistake. It is no accident that the French distinguish between them and refer them to two different laws. They regulated quality in the vineyard, demarcating the territory and setting the rules for producing there, and then they made a law to protect against adulteration in the winery. We never did that and it was a big mistake. We need to rethink that”.
And finally, Attilio Scienza in his capacity as chairman of the Doc Wines Committee indicated what is urgently needed to put the sector in a position to react to the changes taking place. “We are facing two huge issues, climate change and sustainability, which, until 3-5 years ago, were not addressed, but now involve changing specifications”, Scienza stressed. “We are beginning to exceed the prescribed alcohol levels, so not only is it necessary to change the specifications, but also to “delocalize” viticulture (change slopes and exposures, look for higher altitudes, but without excluding more drastic solutions, and so on, ed.) If, until yesterday, cultivation environments were chosen to make lots of sugars and wines of a certain type, today we need to reverse course. The establishment of appellations dates back to 1964: the consumers of that time, moreover, who were almost always Italian, nor Asian, nor from other continents, are not those of today. We must, therefore, change wine types and make the consortia realize that wines of 15-16 degrees alcohol, 40 extract and a dense color are no longer drunk by anyone. That they don’t appeal to young people who are looking for fresher wines, even among whites”.
“Then”, continues Attilio Scienza, professor at the University of Milan and president of the Doc Wines Committee, “there is the “sustainability” issue: specific rules must be included in the specifications, and the state must give the certification, guaranteeing the seriousness with which the producer faces in his environment to make his wine. And then there is the issue of the adoption of resistant vines for appellation wines, a fundamental topic that the Doc Wines Committee is willing to address, but not allowed by the Consolidated Text, which it is necessary to think about changing. Finally, returning to the productive “vocation” of an area, I want to emphasize its value as a historical and cultural legacy received from our predecessors and to be handed down to our children. “Vocation” is a heritage not to be dissipated, because it carries with it past history, a cultural mechanism that has transformed the land and the landscape. And I believe it is a word, a concept that we will be able to use to greater advantage in the coming years”.