Cristian Specogna, born in 1987, is a young winemaker from Friuli-Venezia Giulia. In 2023 he was named the best young Italian winemaker of that year, and this is no accident. Cristian’s work has been handed down for three generations, since his grandfather opened the Specogna Winery in the hills of Rocca Bernarda. Sixty years have passed between then and now, but on those hills the same family continues to produce some of Italy’s most sought-after organic wines. In this interview, Cristian tells us about the origins of his winery, his love for the land in which his vines are sunk, and the social commitment that involves him.
Cristian, tell me a little bit about yourself and your career. You took over the reins of something that your grandfather built back in the 1960s.
That’s right. Our family’s adventure began in the 1960s. Our grandfather, Leonardo, came from a mountainous area of Friuli, on the border with Slovenia, which after World War II was not at all easy territory. Like many young people, he emigrated for a few years to work in Switzerland, not easy times there either. After five years, he decided to return. Before emigrating, he had never been out of his hometown, or rather, had only been in the surrounding areas. It was only on the return trip that he went back down with some people he had met in Switzerland, by car, and then he drove around the rest of Friuli a bit to see what was out of his world. And there, for the first time, he passed through the hills of Rocca Bernarda, in Corno di Rosazzo, which is where we are today, and he fell completely in love with it. He decided to invest his savings to buy a small piece of land on this territory. On these hills the vine plant has been cultivated for centuries. Year after year, he began to understand the potential of wine production and to make the winery more and more devoted to viticulture, improving the production processes in the countryside and in the cellar. This process, this path, continued with our father Graziano, who took over everything in the 1980s, and today we are, instead, the third generation, with my brother Michele and me. Our dream is to improve ourselves more and more and to make the winery not only capable of producing quality wines, but also to make it known in the world, to be more present in international markets and to communicate properly to bring out what are our peculiarities and the potential of the territory.
You are also known for your organic approach. What are the advantages and difficulties of working with organic products?
Our choice for organic was not dictated by fashion, but by personal experience. Even as a child, I accompanied my grandfather and father to the countryside and saw how certain practices of the past, with the use of chemicals, impoverished the soil. You would see vineyards that were less and less in balance, with less biodiversity. Year after year the feeling grew stronger and stronger in us to go down a path of organic viticulture, with the idea of creating a healthier ecosystem capable of achieving a quality spontaneous balance, able to resist climate extremes, erosion problems. But as you said well, there are also difficulties, challenges.
And what are they?
Managing an organic vineyard requires considerable organizational skills. It is essential to use only natural products and to intervene in the times before rains, when the risk of disease is greatest. Often, this implies the need to operate on weekends, requiring a team ready to respond promptly. In addition, it is essential to have a deep understanding of one’s environment, collecting climatic and agronomic data for each vineyard. This “tailoring” approach allows treatments to be tailored to each plant, improving the health of the vines and enhancing their qualities. Although organic farming involves upfront costs for training and adaptation, in the long run it offers significant benefits, such as healthier vineyards and higher yields, with more competitive selling prices in markets such as the Nordic or Canadian markets. Finally, it is crucial to effectively communicate the value and efforts behind organic to the market and consumers, as it cannot be assumed that simply switching to organic will guarantee higher sales.
One thing definitely worth noting is this collaboration that is being activated with the Autism Project Foundation…
It is a project that I hold dear to my heart; it is an example of social inclusion and leveraging the resources of people with disabilities. In a nutshell, we have started with this institute dedicated to supporting people with Asperger’s syndrome and autism spectrum disorders a series of collaborations where, initially, we had created a project where kids from this institute would go and paint the labels of bottles dedicated to this initiative. Often, people with autism spectrum disorders have incredible artistic abilities, both in painting and music, and when I got to know this reality, I got to see some art workshops that they were conducting, where I saw how some of the kids, without ever having seen paintings before, were able to create impressive canvases that looked like they were made by professional artists. That’s where the idea of labels came from. Today we want to take it a step further and show that these people can be an added value to the community, to the area and to the businesses that operate there. We have started a series of internships and apprenticeships here at the winery with some of the boys from this institute, where the boys have come this year to pick grapes during the harvest and follow the first stages of winemaking, and this will continue in the coming months until bottling. Much of the proceeds from these productions go to support the initiatives of this institute.
Earlier you talked about the goal of making the company more international. What is the market abroad?
The export percentage is already quite significant; today we sell in forty countries around the world, and this is very satisfying, considering that only ten years ago we were halfway there. The United States is currently our first market worldwide. New York, in particular, is a very important marketplace for us, since we have been collaborating for years with an importer who, step by step, has managed to get us into the circuits that count in the Big Apple as far as catering is concerned. Aiming at foreign markets is a fundamental aspect for me: not only does it allow us to expand our customer base and make our sales more solid and structured over time, but it also gives us the opportunity to gain visibility in international squares such as, precisely, New York, helping us to create a stronger brand and, consequently, added value.
The article When wine is a family affair: interview with Cristian Specogna comes from TheNewyorker.
