Selezioni Inc

Selezioni means in Italian, my mother tongue, selections, my selections. I started Selezioni because I wanted to share what my life experience has been, as first a farmer in Italy, then as a wine selector in the US. My focus has been, since the 90’s, on clean agriculture and wines made by clean agriculture. Wine is, first and foremost, an agricultural product. Others might disagree, but this is my core belief and my selections reflect that. All wineries I have selected are estate wineries. They do not buy grapes or bulk juice, ever. Sometime, in fact they do the reverse, they sell them. In other words these are real producers. All of our wines are family owned and run; there are no corporations, no big money companies, no idle celebrity vintners. There is a direct relationship of the owners to their land. Their hands get dirty. They put their heart and soul into their work. They do not force their land, but respect it. Their techniques may differ, but they all converge to a certain extent. Wineries selected here range from biodynamic and organic certified to permaculture ones, which in many ways are even more complete. Some use practices that you might find rather unusual. All, as you will see and taste, result in good soil and healthy plants. There are sustainable wineries too, which is not conventional particularly when we are talking about wineries from Europe. They all enrolled in the EISA program, which in many ways is as strict as organic certifications (if we measure copper alone one of our EISA producers uses the least amount). The same standards applies in the cellar. I focus on non-interventionists. It means that these wineries will take the material they preciously tended in the vineyards and continue their evolution into the making of wine. They do not bend it by technology, chemistry or the latest trend in the wine world, just to please you. And it is not just a matter of what kind of yeast has been used or how much SO2. The list of additives and “ingredients” is very long... for example enzymes and lysozymes are extremely intrusive in the making of wine. I keep a watchful eye on what our wineries use. These wines are an expression of culture; they express the hard work of people who are totally in unison with their land. These are wines I believe deserve the name “wines”, not just pass the lenient legal test to be called wines. Of course as most of these wines are limited in production, best to check first for availability. Any questions, please email us at [email protected] Grazie mille, Paolo Bernardi and the Selezioni team