Hard Times Make the Best Wine

While on a recent trip with my family to Italy, we found ourselves at one of the oldest wineries in Tuscany and met the owner, the 23rd generation of her family to run the business. In addition to sharing the story of the winery and how those vines intertwined with those of her life, she talked about how the most challenging and dry seasons led to the best wine. I found that incredibly profound and applicable to life.

A dry season is actually really good for grapes used to make wine. That seems counterintuitive to the production of product, specifically fresh fruit like grapes. The humanity within us all wishes for the juciest of grapes, the richest of harvests, and for the beautiful weather to be never ending, but that is not how it goes. If every harvest was a good one, we would not have an appreciation for it, nor would we have really good wine.

The owner expressed she did not know about the future of the winery. It seems to be more and more challenging to evolve at the rate of the world, but maybe this winery doesn't have to. I found the history and integrity behind the business to make it the most distinctive out of the other places we've gone to in Tuscany. Nothing needs to change other than the visibility of this wonderful place run by a family who's lived in Montelcino since the Middle Ages.

The seasons where we struggle the most, the ones we wish never happened, the ones we wish would get over with, those are the ones that help us grow and get to where we are today. At the winery, their most recent vintage is from 2020 and due to the state of the world, only 1,000 bottles were produced and on the day of our visit 100 remained. My family walked away with 2 of those bottles, tiny pieces of the winery's soul.