It is since its foundation in 1985 that the Pizzolato Winery in Villorba (Treviso) has embraced the organic cause, a vision that within the company philosophy is not only a method of agronomic management, but becomes a real lifestyle adopted in primis by Settimo Pizzolato, owner of the company, and handed down by him to the family and team members. And precisely in pursuing the goal of achieving 100% sustainable cultivation, the Pizzolato Winery started an experimentation on PIWI resistant vines in 2017 and in the first few months of the same planted 15,200 new cuttings on an area of 4.3 hectares.
PIWI- Pilzwiderstandfähig, a term which translated from German means resistant to fungi, indicates a series of vines obtained by pollination between Vitis Vinifera and American vine which, cross after cross, has been found to be capable of naturally opposing fungal diseases such as powdery mildew and downy mildew.
This peculiarity of the PIWI vines allows to limit the treatments with copper and sulfur to a maximum of 2-4 per year, thus reducing the environmental impact. The project immediately showed its great potential: "If from an oenological point of view the planted PIWI varieties are giving interesting results" says Settimo Pizzolato, "even in the vineyard, so far, the viticulture of the PIWI has shown more advantages than disadvantages Although they are varieties of which little is known about the adaptability to the soil, they show that they react well in the areas where they have been planted, making us optimistic in following this path to the most unknown ", concludes Pizzolato.
An ambitious project to which the winery has dedicated itself with great enthusiasm and investment of resources, but which however does not have the presumption of replacing the indigenous varieties, identifying and characteristic of the various territories where they are born, but of contributing to the creation of a world where the safeguarding the environment and the people who inhabit it takes on an increasingly central role, pursuing the corporate vision of 100% sustainable viticulture.
The project, which was structured in two phases, saw on the one hand the creation of a vineyard in which many PIWI varieties admitted in the Veneto disciplinary were planted, on the other the monovarietal planting of individual PIWI vines selected after a long research to identify which grape variety best suited to the terroir of the Piave area.
And it is from this sustainable bet that HO'OPA, HUAKAI, and KONTI-KI were born , respectively a sparkling Pet Nat wine from Johanniter grapes, a still white from Bronner grapes and a red from Merlot Khorus, Cabernet Cortis and Prior that they are added to the Novello from Merlot Khorus and Cabernet Cortis grapes presented in November 2019.
Each of these wines represents the stage of a journey into a still unexplored world that is also told visually on the bottle of the wines themselves thanks to the "talking" labels and a dragonfly, ambassador of clean agriculture that explains the new world of PIWI . The four wines, in fact, each represent a different stage: departure, travel, means and destination.
