Maurizio Ferraro

We woke up in Sardinia, on the island’s upper east coast, and drove north to the airport as the sun rose. The sky was unique that morning, a combination of the early Sardinian summer and my lack of familiarity with the sensation of a sunrise anywhere. It was a sky that induced longing, nostalgia, and a feeling that the future would unfold in ways beyond my control all in one. Our plans taking us in separate paths before meeting up again in Kyiv, my girlfriend flew to Rome, and I flew to Torino. I had left the rental car in the parking lot there for ten days, a purely logistical and storage-based move. It’s a specific sensation to walk off of a plane and into your car, but even more specific of a sensation when it’s a rental car. I drove straight to Consorzio for a solo lunch, and sat in the front room where it seemed they put all of the tourists. Locals only in the back, I guess. The sommelier remembered me from my last visit to the restaurant and I immediately asked for a bottle of Aurelien Lefort’s Modou, a négoce Xarel-lo vinified of fruit from Tony Carbo which I had remembered was on the list. Aurelien is first and foremost a red wine producer, but I do really fuck with his whites all the same. A touch is a touch, I suppose and it was hot, and I wanted something both brutal and refreshing all at once. I stuffed myself at that lunch, pure hedonism in the sense of pretending to be European, like all of the Europeans who would go and have a solo lunch and smash a unicorn bottle to the dome with zero problem.

I casually stumbled out of the restaurant after buying a few cellar bottles of Panevino and Massa Vecchia, telling myself how cool the somm thought I probably was from these specific requests of bottles that most wouldn’t bother to ask for. I got in my rental car and somehow managed to weave my way through the late afternoon Torino traffic and onto the highway towards Monferrato, where I was to meet Maurizio Ferraro. Stubbornly I hadn’t bothered to buy a car charger for my iphone which seemed to be sucking down battery life like a newborn on its mother’s chest. I pulled up to the gate of the Ferraro’s house just as my phone died and stood there yelling like a maniac, until finally Maurizio heard me and came to let me in. I asked him for a charger, letft the phone in his house and immediately we hopped into his Citroen and drove to his vines. It was my first visit sans phone (camera) in some time, and while disappointed at my lack of chances to document, it was an opportunity to really revel in the beauty of the rolling Piemontese hills, and to hear Maurizio explain his story as the only Italian member of S.A.I.N.S. 

2024 was already looking dicey in the vines that day, and despite his Italian hospitality Ferraro was visibly stressed. I felt bad about my timing of visit, but we made the most of it and went back to the house and cellar after the vines to have a few bottles and a beautiful meal of rabbit pasta that he and his wife had prepared. Maurizio explained to me his gratitude towards the likes of Jerome Saurigny and the circle of Catalan winemakers based in El Pinell de Brai that have forever changed his already radical outlook on growing grapes and making wines. Feeling the long day and big lunch combining with the even bigger apéro and dinner, I succombed to my fatigue, and took repose in a room rented in the village that belonged to what seemed like the only café, a place for locals to silently sip on a beer and puff a cigarette, stare into the void, exchange some words with each other and do it all over again and again.

Hanging with Maurizio in a park in Barcelona, late 2023

When you see Maurizio in the context of a California wine fair he comes across as a pretty together and straight-laced guy who likes to make and drink interesting wines. But in the context of Monferrato and Piemonte at large, Maurizio is the utmost outsider freak, a traitor to the traditionalism that, frankly, enbalms the region, and if I’m to be real, most of the organic grape growing in Italy as well. Anyways, is it really that far out to not add sulfur to your wines?

Secondome Rosato 2023
Field blend
$25