To continue my series of short interviews I’d talked with Gabriele Dolfi, a chief executive of Inserrata.
— Greetings Gabriele!
How are you doing nowadays?
Sadly, I can’t taste your wine in Russia
Why don’t you distribute it to us?
— Because it’s not easy to find an importer there, I’ve tried with some but it’s almost impossible, it seems you need to know someone who’s important out there before to start. I’ve tried with “SimpleWine” and they said that they don’t want to buy new wine for the moment. Because is not a nice moment and that’s O.K. I can understand.
— Did you talk with another companies?
— Yes, with many.
I’ve also a Russian influencer that help me with the review.
We work mostly with high-end clients so I think it’s not a problem for Russian, but I think that’s not easy.
— That’s interesting.
I would like to enjoy your wine. Hope our wine companies would change their mind.
I myself know a few important persons over here, I will say my word.
— So your vineyard is a family run business.
How it all started?
Who’d decided to get into the wine?
— The farm was bought in 1997, and my parents started to produce olive oil because we have many Olive trees.
Since 2005 we are organic certified by ICEA EU. And in the same year we have started to produce wine, the old one. A wine that we had produced only since 2005 to 2008 with a different label, name and style. For just three years and we had to stop it, because it was “just for fun”.
In 2016 we start a collaboration with an important enologist from Florence, he has worked for many times in France. The label was painted by an artist from London, Alexandria Coe.
The label is a picture of my mother face. Because the idea about wine started from her. We produce 15K bottles each year so we’re a very small winery.
— Was it produced from the same vine that’s today? I mean the old one
— Nope. Before we have 12 hectares of old vineyard like Colorino, Malvasia, Sangiovese, Canaiolo.
But we’ve taken them out because it was so old and not productive. And it was replaced by Sangiovese, Chardonnay and Merlot and now we have five hectares. We focus ourselves in the production of white and rose, because the terroir is full of fossil and that’s perfect for this kind of wines. And because marketing, as you know, in tuscany all the farm are historically red wine. We wanted to do something different and we were right.
We are out of stock for the last couple years! That’s why we plan to plant more. We haven't felt much about the COVID crisis because we had started in 2016 to invest in marketing and digital, and the 90% of the farm in Italy are old style with only off-line sales. We invest in e-commerce and work around Italy and the world with high-end clients and premium restaurant that never feel crisis.