STRAIGHT TO THE SOURCE
The journey from an Italian vineyard to your glass! LAURA GODDARD, Managing Director of boutique Italian wine specialist and online shop Bacco, shares how she sources wine, with some highlights from a recent trip to Italy to visit the winemakers themselve
I’ve noticed a big change in Singapore over the past few years, with more small businesses catering to consumers who care about the origins of their groceries or meals. You find artisan coffee shops, cafés and bars springing up, providing specific information about the provenance of their products or ingredients.
It’s the same at our wine tastings; I find that many guests are not only keen to discover more about the grapes and terroir, but also the families behind the wines. Learning something about the geography of a vineyard helps understand the aromas and tastes of the wine, and hearing stories about a winemaker (how he took over the land from his father and grandfather, for instance, or, the new cellar he’s designing with his daughter) makes the experience of drinking that glass of wine even more enjoyable.
For this reason, sourcing new wines is not only about finding the best wines to represent our business philosophy – healthy wines from organic, family-run, small-production vineyards – it’s also about reminding ourselves why we love these artisanal products and the people behind them.
My role has become that of a “storyteller” on behalf of the wineries that we’ve selected to work with, and
this makes a trip to Italy to visit the winemakers not only important, but a real privilege, too. This past April, I travelled to as many Italian regions as I could, to meet the next generation of winemakers who are bringing their own personalities to the process.
The Expo
We kicked off the ambitious tour with a four-day event in Verona called Vinitaly, and an afternoon at natural wine expo Vinnatur – both chances to meet a range of wineries in one place. In addition to catching up with some of our current partners, we also sought out new wineries from lesser-known regions to find unusual and rare wines endemic to those areas of Italy.
The selection process starts with research into an estate’s vineyard and cellar practices (for example, organic farming and limited intervention in the cellar), then meeting at the expo to not just taste the wines but also get to know the winemakers themselves. This is where the winemaker’s passion can make or break the deal. There are so many fabulous wineries, so the selection process is quite a challenge. Often, it simply comes down to gut instinct.