Shortly after the middle of the twentieth century, A. Rainoldi & Figlio in Chiuro began to bottle their own products under their own, recognisable, name. This marked the beginning of a new adventure The first labels At the dawn of the Italian economic miracle, Valtellina too was in turmoil. In the upper valley, new hydroelectric power plants were being built. Two thousand workers were hired to construct the second Cancano dam. A gargantuan task matched only by the workers' appetites. Aldo and Giuseppe Rainoldi, who now had two trucks, supplied the wine. They came and went continuously, driving up and down the mountain roads for hours, smiling to hide their fatigue. Young Peppino kept his head down, as he’d been taught, but could no longer ignore the need to express his real self. Having reached the age of maturity, he attempted to spread his wings, opening a bar in Sondrio. Without however abandoning his father. In the morning, he delivered wine. At noon, he left for his café. He resisted as long as he could, but getting home after midnight and resuming work at dawn would have proved too much for anyone and so he returned to the bosom of the family business, but went to Aldo with a heavy heart. “Look, Dad, if I can't try and do what I have in mind, I’m not delivering wine anymore.” Giuseppe wanted to leave a mark on the world of things. He wanted to change the old company, not replace it with a new one. His was a soft revolution and Aldo embraced it. He no longer bought wine in bulk, only grapes. He no longer sold in chestnut barrels, only in bottles. He bought new machines. He followed one tack, then another. Experimented, tried and tried again. Only those who never try never make mistakes. After all, what are routes? Merely itineraries cancelled by the vagaries of life, ready to be mapped out once again. Peppino had a clear plan in mind and it finally started to take shape. 32 The Rainoldis do not grow by improvising. They study treatises on viticulture, and experiment in the field and the cellar. They drive innovation An unusual classic “We have Nebbiolo refermentation in our DNA,” Aldo Rainoldi proudly declares. Today, he is both the brain and the brawn behind the winery, while his wife, Michela Benigni, is the wind in his sails. Bergamasque by birth, but a citizen of the world, she is the ambassador of Rainoldi wines worldwide. “The first attempts to produce a sparkling wine from a Chiavennasca date back to the 1970s,” Uncle Peppino explains. “I'll tell you how it went.” The Rainoldis are compelling storytellers. “I tried to make a sparkling rosé wine with an oenologist friend,” confesses Giuseppe. “We started out almost as a joke, just a few bottles to drink together on special occasions.” They popped the first ones and noted their merits and flaws. Then they began with other experiments and, year after year, the product improved. “At that time, we had formed a profitable partnership with Daniele & C., a company owned by the Italo-American brothers Aldo and Mario Daniele, and our wines were doing really well in the United States.” “We were sending up to a hundred and twenty thousand bottles a year overseas,” Peppino continues. “One day, I slipped six of our sparkling wines into a crate.” One of those strokes of fate that make life exciting decreed that the importer sent one of these bottles to a competition reserved for the Italian metodo classico. The Brut Rosé produced in the Chiuro cellars took first place. The news hit the press, including the pages of the New York Times and Daily News. 1984 marked the beginning of a fascinating new adventure. “Today our catalogue includes two single-vintage rosés made from Chiavennasca and a few Pignola and Rossola,” explains Aldo Rainoldi. “Our Cuvée Maria Vittoria, which rests on the lees for at least sixty months, is one of the jewels in our company’s crown.” 40 Always suspended between that old tale of blood, sweat, and tears and the apologia of the impossible slopes, two concepts sublimated by the idea of heroic viticulture, our job can today also be a source of joy and smiles In motus veritas Thinking you have arrived in port and then setting sail again. What could be more wonderful? This is the very expression of the human journey. We think we have arrived and instead we are still travelling, in order to grasp the capital meaning of our existences: challenge and overcome known boundaries. This is the Rainoldi recipe: self-renewal while staying true to ourselves, our origins and values. A company always on the move, ready to go off the beaten track, along paths as yet unexplored. Geographical distance is not the only thing that counts. This, however, we realise later. First, we have to penetrate our dreams, grasp their power. Who travelled the furthest? Aldo, the founder, who moved a handful of kilometres from Fontaniva to Casacce? Peppino who exported his wines to Germany, the United States and Japan? Or Aldo junior who returned from Bergamo to Valtellina to buy vines? Each of them has a story of necessary fatigue to tell. “I don't like the word fatigue, however,” confesses Aldo. "Of course, those who came before me did a lot of hard work, but dedication is one thing, sacrifice is another. If we can lighten our load, why not?". 48 In the years when Saturday Night Fever was all the rage, the name Rainoldi came to New York's most exclusive clubs and restaurants. The latitudes and longitudes of the markets became blurred lines in a fluctuating picture From Lake Como to New York Partly because of its geographical proximity, partly because of its innate charm, Lake Como was the stage chosen by A. Rainoldi & Figlio for their debut outside the borders of Valtellina. “It took me a whole week to tour it all, visiting hotels, restaurants, and trattorias,” Peppino recalls. “I realised instantly that it offered huge potential and returned to Chiuro with orders for twenty thousand bottles in my pocket.” The wine was already in the cellar, we just had to do all the rest: filling, corking, labelling. “We bought new machinery, and after a week we were ready to bottle our Grumello.” It was a success. Other traditional Valtellina labels soon followed: Sassella, Inferno, Valgella, Sfursat. Awards started to arrive. Fame spread. Giuseppe Rainoldi was looking far ahead. A change in consumer tastes brought with it our opportunity to take off. “The seventies was all about white and sparkling wines. Our reds suffered a slump. It was then that the idea came to me: let's make them known abroad.” However, there’s a big difference between saying and doing. A huge difference in this case. But Peppino had an ace up his sleeve. The bottles produced in Chiuro went on show at the Coliseum in New York. And they took off. Soared in fact, until a 1976 Sassella by Rainoldi landed on the wine list of the Windows on the world restaurant in fact, on the 107th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, the Big Apple's most seductive showcase, up there among emblazoned labels, worthy of a mention by Countess Serbelloni Mazzanti Vien Dal Mare. Fortune favours the brave, they say. And tenacious visionaries too, we might add. Suddenly the wines bottled in the cellars in Casacce were enchanting palates in the USA. At times the soul of the mountain is impenetrable, holed up in tradition and out of sight. Even Valtellina is sometimes hidden. Its steep vineyards, on the other hand, are displayed proudly. “Look at our rows of vines,” Aldo remarks, “suspended between sky and rock, in different places than the others. This is a great advantage, because it allows us to offer a product that stands out, but it is also a complication.” As the Rainoldi family see it, the vine growers’ duty is to guard the place they work. “Yes, I feel like a custodian. Of the land that hosts us, certainly, but also of a centuries-old history.” Measured in his gestures, affably eloquent, Aldo is the perfect synthesis of the family credo: feet firmly on the ground and eyes upwards. Looking into the distance. The founder's grandson grew up far from the family winery. But the smell of wine is strong, it envelops desires and aspirations. Every time he went up to Chiuro from Bergamo, to visit his grandfather and uncle, he felt an inseparable bond with his homeland. In the end, he accepted his destiny to take care of everything he felt he inherently belongs to. The slopes clinging to the moraine soils and rounded rocks that run for kilometres along the Rhaetian chain exposed to the midday sun, the stunning stone gardens that have borrowed space from the forest, the wine cellar founded by his grandfather and expanded by his uncle where modernisation never stops. “Now we have to keep buying land and planting good grapes,” Peppino urges. “One day I too will have to step aside,” points out Aldo, “and I would like to hand over the keys to everything I have guarded in even better condition than when I received it.” This is a philosophy that has become the norm: dialogue, yes, argue even, but always and only for the good of the business. 36 “A century of history has implanted a love of wine in the heart, head and stomach of all of us.” Enamoured custodians 44
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