5th - 6th September 2017
The telling of the story of the harvest of Fico is like trying to describe a painting so full of colour we are not sure where to start. However, lets begin with the sky, transparent with fleeting thin wispy strands of cloud accompanied by a light breeze and a still warm sun.
The grapes managed to reach maturity during a summer which tested not just us but all fauna and flora thanks to the lack of rain and the extremely high temperatures. These grapes we know well: we have watched them form, grow and become that what we see today, which, seems to us a beautiful thing.
The grape harvest signifies the selection of only the best grapes, discarding all the fruit not considered suitable to find its way to the cellars: some grapes did not reach maturity, some became withered on the vine.
Highly specialised, this work constitutes the link with all that precedes it in the vineyard, that is, a careful management of the land such as; the aim to draw moisture to the surface of the earth during the period of the rigid drought, the cultivation and control of the protective canopy of the small branches and leaves on the area of the vine facing the strongest sun and the weaving of elevated waves above the vines with the buds and new leaves in order to eliminate the trauma of the pruning and cutting of the vine.
We are in many for the harvest: there are the professionals, those whose primary occupation is in the vineyard, flanked by the many friends of Elena and Filippo, young hands all instructed on how to assure the quality of the fruit to be selected. To the many colours we can now add the many voices of those working, sharing and telling stories but never losing sight of the objective.
Everyone is dressed in the same white T-shirt bearing the name and the logo of FICO and thanks to this we can see at a distance a concentration of candid white clothed figures moving throughout the vines, selecting, cutting and carefully laying the bunches of grapes in their boxes ready for the cellars. The boxes then are quickly collected and brought to the cellars where the selection process begins for the transformation of the fruit into must.
