In Fontaniva, in the peace of a timeless age, a spirit of enterprise was born that we could consider as being the nucleus of what, years later, would become the wine company. Looking back in time Abstract It might sound odd, but to tell this story about wine, we must start with a village whose name, Fontaniva, according to linguists, comes from fons viva or “live water spring” in Latin. Here, towards the end of the nineteenth century, in this little village in the Val d'Arigna in the heart of the Orobie Alps, Giuseppe Rainoldi and his wife Domenica opened an osteria, a traditional inn with adjacent grocery shop. On their shelves you could find a little of everything. Or rather, everything that was needed to live on then. Giuseppe was the first of twelve children born to Lorenzo Rainoldi and Maria Tuia. He came into the world in 1866, while the Third War of Independence was raging. That year, many young people flocked to Valtellina to defend the borders and these epoch-making times were perhaps what gave him his enterprising temperament. The fact is that at a certain point in his life he started a business. He chose a remote location, 824 metres above sea level. This is how the L'Eco della Provincia di Sondrio, the local newspaper, described the tiny hamlet of Ponte in Valtellina in 1888. “It is not Arigna, like so many mountain villages visited by the curious and tourists, or chosen as a summer holiday destination. Not a soul comes here or stops here, if you disregard a few tired hunters, or the odd priest celebrating a rare festival. It feels like a mysterious cavern, somewhere you imagine fairies and sorcerers appearing.” The women worked at their looms, their menfolk toiled in the fields, cultivating what they can. In winter, even the men helped with the weaving. They handed down the production of the traditional rag rugs called pezzotti to us. Today, six people live permanently in Fontaniva. At that time, however, there were seven hundred bodies to feed. The Rainoldis provided for them by trading and exchanging flour, milk, and the odd barrel of wine. English 6 “Grandfather was like he’d been born in a wine barrel and I have followed in his footsteps.” Travels in a Fiat 500 During the summer of 1945, Italy started its recovery. The desire to get back on its feet and erase the memory of the war prevailed over everything. It was a new beginning also for Aldo Rainoldi. The demand for wine was growing, but it wasn’t all easy. People were abandoning the countryside, leaving the mountains. He rebelled against this ongoing depopulation and time was to prove him right. He began to involve his son in his wine-related travels. Giuseppe, known as Peppino, had been born in 1937. On a Sunday Aldo would sometimes also take his youngest son with him. “I was nine or ten years old,” Gianluigi remembers in his calm, down-to-earth voice with hardly any trace of a local accent. “At dawn I would get into that lobster-coloured Fiat 500 and off we went! We would visit hotels and restaurants, and even go house to house. Or we'd time it to be in the churchyard just after mass, where the whole community would meet. I used to watch with amusement as Dad collected the order slips. On Monday and Tuesday, he would prepare the wine, and he started his delivery rounds on Wednesday.” Gianluigi, who would later move to live in Bergamo and follow a different path, still gets emotional when he recalls his father's life. “Not a single day off, yet he never looked tired.” Respect and fairness were his daily maxims. “Grandfather was a cheerful generous man. He devoted himself body and soul to his work and was capable of forming good relationships. People welcomed him into their homes as a friend rather than a salesman,' comments Gianluigi’s son, also christened Aldo Rainoldi. Like history repeating itself, Aldo too went in an opposite direction to his father. Born in Bergamo in 1973, he returned to Valtellina in the 1990s after graduating in Viticulture and Oenology from the Universities of Turin and Alba. 28 These were strong arms taken from the countryside and the alpine pastures to build roads, dams, penstocks, and power stations. They were mouths to feed and water. The upside-down shadow of the sky Every morning, Aldo would leave the wine cellars in Casacce and set off to deliver wine to even the remotest villages, where there was always someone eager to buy cheap calories and a little intoxication to make life bearable. He got up early, came home late. He drove fast. In the Adda he glimpsed ‘the upside-down shadow of the sky’ and in the sky ‘the sweet hill of Ardenno’, to quote the translated verses of Salvatore Quasimodo, not only a poet but also a surveyor who at the time worked at the Civil Engineering offices in Sondrio. The ruggedness of this region, secluded and steep, became an opportunity for the generation of an autonomous proud economy. For centuries, the people of Valtellina had covered the sunny slopes with vines. At higher altitudes, they harvested rye and buckwheat. The long history of hydroelectric production is a tale in itself. Engineers revealed that the old mills used only a fraction of the huge natural forces available. Dams and power stations transformed the landscape, converted the mountains to progress, and supported the industrial launch of Lombardy. Much of the energy released by the watercourses flowed down to the industries on the plains. Hundreds of men were recruited in the valley to work on construction sites. 18 workshops were targeted by the retreating Nazis. They were dreadful years. The shadow of a world tragedy also fell on the Rainoldi winery. “The signori were friendly and I used to join them for lunch. They worked really hard: she recorded sales, he busied himself with the oak barrels. There were five of them in the cellar. They had to be kept very clean, inside and out and every week I had to wax the fronts.” “Wax on, wax off.” The cult phrase first uttered by master Miyagi in the film The Karate Kid, when he invites Daniel LaRusso to put wax on all the cars with his right hand and take it off with his left. A bit like Virgilio in the wine cellars in Chiuro, the youngster learnt that valuable lessons can be imparted by apparently simple, even seemingly useless, tasks. His new wife’s dowry included a plot of land, paving the way for the business of the future. The root lay in the past, but needed reviving if it was to survive and be passed on Dreams in the Ireland of Lombardy In those years, Valtellina was known as the ‘Ireland of Lombardy’, as many left to seek their fortune elsewhere, in the nearby Swiss Confederation or France, some even in far-off Australia. Giuseppe and Domenica stayed put, while some of their children emigrated. Aldo, born in 1905, remained with his parents. Firmly rooted in his land like a tree. Just eight years old, he would ride his mule up and down the valley, fetching the wheat to be turned into flour in the Fontaniva stone mill. After the death of his father, his mother needed a pair of strong arms at home. Aldo, the dutiful son, obliged. He was a willing worker. Firmly convinced that the future could only be better, at the age of twenty he settled in Casacce, near Chiuro. A huddle of timeworn houses, some dating back to the fourteenth century, given new life by the carriage road up to the Stelvio. The old buildings were then joined by slightly more comfortable houses and Aldo built the tallest of them all. Young Rainoldi often thought back to the shop in Fontaniva and the barrels that his parents used to sell to cheer up the people of Arignano. He now wanted to go a step further: to make his living solely from wine. What he began to distribute in the valley was a simple, genuine product. Simple like the inns, the locals, and the life of the mountain people. Not all of them poor, but those who could afford high quality wines were few and far between. The wine aristocracy at that time was a French prerogative. Aldo Rainoldi however managed to secure himself a “quota of nobility” by taking as his bride Virginia Carugo, descendant of a family included in the Matricula nobilium familiarum Mediolani since 1377. 12 To become great, in any field, requires dedication, commitment, a desire for self-improvement, and the ability to listen. This is the Rainoldi credo Wax on, wax off In 1942, Aldo Rainoldi hired his first cellarman. “The pay was 5 lire, and on Saturdays I was given a loaf of rye bread,” recalls Virgilio Salvagni. Born in 1928, he is both the historical mind of the company and a collective memory. “In those days, we bought wine in bulk, but also grapes. These were then taken to the press in Chiuro. Grapes were pressed in October and November and we sold the wine from April onwards.” It was a light variety, not for ageing. “We used mainly Bressana and Brugnola,” closely related to the Chiavennasca varietal. “It is the great offspring of Nebbiolo,” in the words of Luigi Veronelli. Valtellina’s symbolic vine, which here becomes ciu venasca or “with more vein” in dialect, therefore more vigorous and suitable for making wine. In the 1950s, Virgilio became a machine fitter in the hydroelectric power stations scattered throughout the valley. In 1944, some of those power-generating 22
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