On our quest to always find new and exciting wines and ways of wine producing, we stumbled across a man in the Vicentino area who, with only 3 acres of land for growing wine, makes some of the best Merlot around. His knowledge of agriculture blew us away and gave us new insight on bio wines.
Gianfranco Masiero, who we met at Vinitaly this past year, grows Merlot grapes on his property and is an advocate on the green process of creating wine. To me, and probably most non agriculturists, I thought growing green meant only no chemicals. Well I was wrong. Really wrong. Besides that farmers can also not add water or other natural additives to the ground after the vine is planted. But what they can add is cow crap- literally. But not just your everyday run of the mill fertilizer. No, this dung is special. I also have to add that I was very intrigued by the process. Lets start from the beginning.
The process originally found by Rudolf Steiner in 1924, discovered that cow horns can be used in the biological process of creating fertilizer. Cow horns, not on the live animal- are hollow (No I didn't know that either) because the cow actually breathes through them. In fact they look like a sponge on the inside. But they also have some crazy cosmic energy that when stuffed with cow dung, and buried for six months, the dung changes. I mean it still looks like, well you know, but it has no smell and it feels like dirt. These horns, called 'corno letame' in Italian, create the best fertilizer in the business, and quite expensive. Add some water, stir, and spray upon your precious vineyard. Crazy I know, but I have to say Ive never tasted a merlot in my life that was as good as his.