The conscience of Zeno is the first thing that came to my mind as soon as I met and chatted a bit with Zeno Zignoli.
Banal? Perhaps. But even if the two characters, the real owner of Monte dei Ragni winery and the literary one created by Italo Svevo, are completely different and the geographical areas and life stories are different, the contacts are there. And they are all included in that word: conscience.
The biodynamic wines of Zeno Zignoli
The awareness they both have of a sick civilization whose only way out, if everything continues without respecting the ancestral rhythms of nature, is total annihilation. Strong themes, which we addressed when we met Zeno late in the evening. The period is the that very intense of the harvest but he welcomed us warmly thanks to the intercession of Vittorio Betteloni, in his Monte dei Ragni winery housed in the courtyard of the historic district in Marega dating back to 1450 and born as a garrison of the nearby Villa della Torre.
A narrow road between two stone walls leads to this hamlet of the municipality of Fumane, where for five generations the Ragno family has managed their own estate, cultivating and making wine from their own grapes. The wines produced here by Zeno Zignoli have now become part of the myth. But reducing the figure of Zeno to that of a wine producer, even of what many define as the best Amarone around, is really an understatement.
And you understand immediately. When as soon as we enter he asks us: “Have you eaten?”. And he disappears, returning immediately afterwards with a cutting board, aged cheese and a bottle of wine with three glasses, immediately putting his hands forward: what we will drink is not wine produced by him!
The next bottles will be marketed only at the end of 2023. And we have reserved them with our eyes closed because his myth admits no doubts.
Immediately after, the story began starting from my question about the name of the winery. Monte dei Ragni derives from the hill on which the properties of the Ragno family extend. Due to the flood of the Adige in 1711 in which all documents relating to the territory were lost, there are no certain dates or property deeds that can explain why the Ragno family in an area where the land was mainly of noble families owned some plots. Lands on which still today are cultivated, on about six-seven total hectares, two hectares of vineyards in full exposure on poor soil ideal for the cultivation of vines, interspersed with numerous and characteristic dry stone walls, called marogne, with typical arrangement with a simple pergola and interspersed with olive and cherry trees.
Zeno has led them since 1997, who married not only a Mrs Ragno but also and above all the philosophy of the family by conducting the land first according to the organic method and since 2008 with the biodynamic one inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy. Monte dei Ragni wines are produced in five to six thousand bottles a year in a sustainable way and respecting the ecosystem, without the use of fertilizers and pesticides of chemical origin. Behind each of these wines is the fascinating story of Zeno, who defines himself as an agri-lover as well as a farmer.
He decided to stay in his land, in Fumane, the same frequented for its strategic position halfway between the Po Valley and the Alps, already 90,000 years ago as evidenced by the Grotta di Fumane, an archaeological site of considerable interest, in which inhabited the Neanderthal man and the Homo Sapiens. Inside, the Shaman was found, a stone painted in red ocher, considered the oldest example of rock painting in all of Europe. And a modern shaman is Zeno, deeply convinced that only by respecting the earth and its gifts is it possible to improve one’s life and that of those around him.
He told us: “agriculture is based on a relationship of trust and responsibility towards the land you cultivate and the people you feed”. If you work well in the vineyard with the biodynamic method, the contribution of oenological adjuvants, such as yeasts, enzymes and acidifiers, is reduced to a minimum if not zero in the cellar. And in the Monte dei Ragni cellar, soft crushing, soft pressing, a wise use of wood and the almost total exclusion of mechanical pumping systems are adopted.
This is the wine according to Zeno’s conscience. Now we just have to wait for our Amarone which will be bottled in December at the last quarter, during the waning moon, between 20 and 30 December. We booked two bottles, because, as Zeno suggested, one can be drunk and the other can be aged for over ten years to appreciate it even more once uncorked.
