Irish (Dubliner), Friulian by adoption, sommelier and artist. A handful of years ago, Ben put together an out-of-the-box book dedicated to an ancient grape variety, Pignolo, and what it inspired, Cultivation of the Invisible. We talked with him about it on a cool winter morning.
It is a story that starts from a glass. The first time I tasted Pignolo was a surprise. It is a red that you would recognize among a thousand others, it is the "zero" wine for those who try it for the first time. I fell in love with it and so I began to want to know more about it, I delved into the history of this red grape, its homeland and its keepers. When I realized that growing Pignolo is not an economic choice, but one of the heart, residing in the winemakers' love for this ancient native Friulian grape, I felt that I had to contribute to making the invisible visible, that is, to somehow tell the unknown and seemingly irrational aspects related to growing Pignolo. It is a wine connected to life, to those aspects of life that we keep ignoring, yet are right before our eyes, if only we want to see them.
Pignolo is out of the rhythm of contemporary life. In the vineyard the plant has its own behavior and the yield is medium-low. It takes five years of work to put Pignolo on the market, and five years is a long time for a wine. Who then are the winemakers who have such patience? Well, they are the ones who have chosen to live with Nature, to respect its methods and times, and to intervene no more than necessary. Cultivating the invisible means taking a step back to widen the view, slow down the movements, observe better and imagine the next step to be taken.
Yes, if you see it from a human perspective, but if you try to look at it from a plant perspective, it's different. According to humans, the Pignolo was on the verge of extinction in the 1970s, but you could actually find many traces of it on the ground. If we give a plant minimal access to light, water and heat, it will live for centuries. I have no doubt that if we go around abandoned vineyards we will find Pignolo vines. In the 1970s, the economy in Europe focused on producing consumer products to make up for the time lost with World War II. If Pignolo is being produced again today, it is because a group of talented winemakers have recognized a value to the plant that goes beyond market demand, a value commensurate with the wonder inherent in the plant itself.
Okay, but the wine was mentioned, not the plant. Without a description of the vine morphology, leaf and bunch, Pignolo is just a name related to the wine and not necessarily to the grape variety from which it comes. In any case, at a time-the Middle Ages-when wines were all blends (today's Pignolo is required to be at least 85 percent pure), the very existence of the word Pignolo to denote a red wine of the highest quality is remarkable. Again, as you see, the perspective from which we look at things makes a difference.
Pignolo is a grape variety that can live for centuries, and in regard to its wine we can imagine scenarios for eternity. However, we need to be able to empty our cup of knowledge so that it is ready to be filled with understanding. In 2016, when I started the book project, there was still not much talk about Pignolo, but now it is coming out and connoisseurs are beginning to perceive its great intrinsic value.
Mmm (smiles)... Here it is: we will need ten generations to fully understand what the Fussy One has to teach us. In essence, borrowing a thought from Eckhart Tolle, we are pupils receiving concept-teaching, the taughts, and the Fussy Man is the teacher, the teacher; together we become the teaching, the teaching (geez Ben!). Generations of ancient civilizations started building pyramids and temples knowing that they would probably never see the end result. But they began moved by a vision: to imagine and build for eternity, for all the lifetimes to come. Pignolo is the monument to eternity of the most visionary of Friuli's winemakers.
PS: Ben devotes his time to "nurturing understanding." His goal is to grow appreciation--of everything. Fussy Cultivating the Invisible is his debut book.
