I admit it. I am not a wine aficionado and I don’t know much about terroir, oenology, grapes, harvests and labels. Having said that, the wine world has always fascinated me, and winemakers even more so, in particular (and no surprises) those from Le Marche. This is why, as soon as the Covid related griefs give me a break, I decide to take a trip to the well known cantina Tenuta Cocci Grifoni in the southern province of Ascoli Piceno (to a northern marchigiana like me, this is also somewhat exotic). The Cocci Grifoni Wine Estate has been on my bucket list for ages and the day before the journey I am as excited as a little girl before a school trip. The Covid crisis has forced me to abruptly put to a halt the part of my job that I love the most, i.e. visiting all sorts of different businesses and venues around Le Marche. This trip for me represents normality resuming again and I do not exaggerate when I say that when I get in the car butterflies flutter in my stomach.
After a two hour drive southbound on the A14 motorway with the Adriatic sea sparkling to my left, the village of Grottammare suddenly appears before me. It’s a sign that my exit is due. At the toll booth a car is waiting for me at the side of the road and inside it I glimpse that unmistakable haircut and the bright smile behind the red lipstick: Marilena Cocci Grifoni is waiting for me and signals me to follow her. I had already had the pleasure to meet her and her daughter Marta a few months before, but I believe that the winemakers should be observed in their natural habitats. That’s right, habitat: to me, all winemakers I have met in my life have always resembled animals at ease in their own territory and if removed from there, they would not survive. Without the vineyard, all essential conditions that make their lives meaningful would no longer be. As if DNA could not give them a choice.
After a 10 minute drive, we turn left and we start the climb towards San Savino. The beauty surrounding me is heart-stopping: the sweet hills of Le Marche here turn into dramatic ravines and slopes and the mysterious Sibillini Mountains look down on us severely, transforming the landscape into the set of an adventure movie. What’s more, it’s Autumn and a lot of the vineyards around here are red like blood – increasing the passion quite distinctively. This area, the Piceno, is dangerously beautiful: here the landscape is a polyphonic choir singing at the top of its lungs, a Carmina Burana of the elements. All this beauty tempts and distracts, so much that I need superhuman concentration to keep my eyes on the windy road.
I arrive at the Estate. Here, on the edge of a breathtaking view, I find the cantina with the industrial soul, two holiday apartments with a swimming pool and the tasting area for an all round reception for wine lovers and everyone else. Marilena and Marta welcome me warmly and, after an excellent espresso, we head towards the famous suspended terrace that has recently been a big hit on social media (from here you can see an amazing view on the rolling hills and far away in the distance you can see the village of Ripatransone). The slope underneath the terrace is scattered with olive trees that produce a local delicacy, the Tenera Ascolana olive. Just by looking at the land on this slope below us, one can gather it’s not easy land to work on, but the forward thinking Marilena has gone for it nevertheless, and those olive trees produce fine extra virgin olive oil. As we chat the morning away I notice that the term sustainability is frequently but not randomly repeated and in this case it’s not one of those fancy, trendy words a lot of people utter without even being fully aware of its meaning. Here at Cocci Grofoni’s, sustainability has been literally translated into concrete actions. For example, Marilena tells me that the work to create the terrace and the terracing nearby (some of it ongoing at the time I visited the estate) has been carried out according to the principles of naturalistic engineering and involves using live vegetable material such as wood or natural fibres. All this is essential because the soil, rich in clay, tends to form ravines so works of this kind mitigates the hydrogeological risk, and by eliminating impactful elements such as cement, the landscape is safeguarded. All this has been complex and pricey, but well worth it because the result is outstanding and it was achieved without compromising on sustainability.
We jump in the car and head towards the estate’s vineyards that over the course of four generations has reached 95 hectares: here biodiversity is preserved thanks to the cultivation of Italian autochthonous vines and it is in this bucolic place nested between the Sibillini Mountains and the Adriatic Sea, that the historic vineyards Messieri, Colle Vecchio, Vigneto Madre and Grandi Calanchi are located. Amongst gravine, woodland and very steep ridges, the grapes of Pecorino, Montepulciano and Sangiovese grow. The landscape all around is simply breathtaking and luckily I am not the driver this time so I have the luxury of observing every tiny detail, every hill, every spur of rock, and every hue of colour and there is so much it’s actually overwhelming. Marilena shows me two artificial lakes for the collection of rain water that her father built decades ago to irrigate the soil and Marilena is having a third one built now. They explain to me that this system improves the habitat for agrosystems because the water basins, thanks to the phytodepuration, are essential for the local fauna and are used as water reservoirs in case of the increasingly frequent heat waves and drought.
The work of Guido, Marilena’s father and company founder who passed away back in 2010, is noticeable across the whole estate and his name is often mentioned. This man must have been a visionary and, as every true marchigiano, a true stubborn one because he was convinced he could produce excellent white wine in an area famous for its red, and he succeeded in the task. He managed to recover a local grape that now produces the famous Pecorino wine: for this enterprise he is remembered with pride by the people of Le Marche and beyond.
We return to the tasting area and sit down for lunch where we are joined by oenologist Fabio, Loredana from administration and the wine specialist Prak Panwar, a curious Indian with a marchigiano accent and currently the flatmate of grandmother Diana, matriarch of the Estate, who even drops by to say hello. We have a lovely lunch and as we eat I try for a moment to forget who is who. The atmosphere is so relaxed and I realise that an external observer might certainly find it difficult to gather who is the owner and who is the employee. I am told that employees and employers eat all together and, believe me, in Italian companies this is not a common practice. We drink an excellent bottle of Tarà (Passerina Frizzante) and chat amicably for a long time. We visit the industrial heart of the winery and Marilena and Marta take me to a secret tasting room hidden behind the tanks. There is something sacred about this room, here reside the oldest and most valuable bottles along with family photos adorning every wall. This room displays the history of the Cocci Grifoni family and their estate.
The whole place struck me deeply, but I must say that Marilena struck me even more. I have the impression that the Cocci Grifoni Estate is a refuge where everything revolves around her. Marilena is many things at the same time. She is a friendly but charismatic manager, an understanding but firm leader, her ways are aristocratic but she celebrates the most peasant aspect of her business. Marilena reminds me of beautifully balanced oxymoron where the apparent contradictions blend perfectly to create one of the greatest entrepreneurs of Le Marche, a far-sighted visionary who looks at the horizon from the top of her vineyard telling stories about her company with passion and ardor. While we were in the vineyards, I thought that this woman looks a lot like her vines: she has roots sinking into this steep land made of ravines and slopes that hold everything and everyone together, while the leaves stretch to the sky and look up and to the future. Marilena Cocci Grifoni seemed to me a bridge between the past and the future: the link between Guido and his daughters Marta and Camilla, the one who guarantees continuity and respect for the past, without denying the need to embrace the future. She is the entrepreneur who since the passing of her father in 2010 has carried on his legacy with conviction and balance, without denying her daughters to lead the company into the digital age.
I come home with six bottles of wine with spectacular labels and the spell is cast. I, the perennial teetotaler, drink half a bottle of Piceno Superiore as if it were holy water and I am irremediably converted. I think that my first post-lockdown journey couldn’t have been better. I spend an inebriated and euphoric evening, but realise that it is not the wine to make me drunk: it is the contact with these women, their business and their integrity, their passion and inspiration that make me fall asleep thinking that us marchigiani are really lucky to have women like them to hold up our name so high.
SITO WEB: Tenuta Cocci Grifoni | INSTAGRAM: Instagram Tenuta Cocci Grifoni
Landscape image by Elisa Generali | Portraits by Leonardo Marconi
