Don’t run away and buy a vineyard

This is an audio transcript of the FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Don’t run away and buy a vineyard’

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Lilah Raptopoulos
If you’ve ever gone wine-tasting at a vineyard, you’ve probably had this fantasy. You run away from the big city. Throw it all out. You move to Napa or New Zealand or Greece. You buy a big straw hat and a villa and you just make wine. There are tons of movies that play into this sort of escapism. Like that movie, A Good Year. Russell Crowe is a high-powered banker. He quits his job, runs to Provence, falls in love with this beautiful waitress, and ultimately, you know, finds himself in wine country. Who wouldn’t want that? Just listen to how they talk about it in the movie. It’s so poetic.

Clip from A Good Year
I enjoy making wine because this sublime nectar is quite simply incapable of lying. Bit too early, bit too late, it matters not. The wine will always whisper into your mouth with complete, unabashed honesty every time you take a sip. Mmm, delightful. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
My colleague Marianna Giusti is set up to do just this. Mari’s family actually owns a vineyard in Tuscany, Italy, which her dad bought when she was a kid, and she’s in line to inherit it. But the funniest thing about this whole story is that she doesn’t want it. And even though sales are going up for vineyards across southern Europe, her warning for us is: don’t. Don’t buy into the fantasy. Avoid it at all costs. Maybe just pick the city like she did.

Marianna Giusti
Suffice to say that I thought I should run away to the urban jungle to run the rat race because really running any agricultural enterprise, but I think a winery in particular, is one of the most stressful, financially risky, and — yeah, I really want to say — dangerous businesses you can get into and people really romanticise this idea. But yeah, it’s a legend. It’s not true. You’re going to be so stressed and overworked and broke and you’re going to lose leave. Don’t do it.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Today, we talk to Mari about what it’s really like to grow up on a vineyard, the highs and the lows and how truly hard it is to make good wine. This is FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos.

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Hi, Mari. Welcome to the show.

Marianna Giusti
Hi, Lilah. Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here.

Lilah Raptopoulos
We’re so happy to have you. So you recently wrote this piece that we loved about what it’s like to actually own a vineyard and how in theory, it’s this like we have this romantic idea of it, but it’s actually extremely hard. (laughter)

Marianna Giusti
To say the least.

Lilah Raptopoulos
To say the least. Tell me about your connection to vineyard life. Tell me about your family’s vineyard. Tell me the whole thing.

Marianna Giusti
So I think when my dad first got the idea to buy a vineyard, I was probably around five. And then he first bought it as an investment/hobby investment. And only later, when they realised the wine yielded by this vineyard — it was actually really amazing quality — they then decided to commercialise it and he went on to abandon a really well-paid permanent job in structural engineering. So he did exactly the technical/corporate switch to bucolic life.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Marianna Giusti
And it was a very funny time. I was very small, but I still have memories about it. And I’m not going to say that nobody smashed plates against the wall or that nobody threatened to, you know, set the vines on fire and run away at night with my father’s small children. You know.

Lilah Raptopoulos
How did your mother fare? (laughter)

Marianna Giusti
Exactly, Lilah. I wasn’t going to bring her up. But, you know, I still don’t think it’s a coincidence that my brother is not . . . my younger brother, he’s six years younger. He’s currently helping out in the family business, in sales. And part of me thinks is because he was too young to remember this phase. Whereas, I remember it very well. So I became a journalist.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Tell me about that. I mean, what was it like for you?

Marianna Giusti
So I was this child, you know, living, I mean, in theory, a great life for a child living on the beach with, you know, the parents had a vineyard. But I was so acutely aware of the weather that looking back, it really wasn’t normal. And so, yeah, I remember there would be a storm or it would get suddenly really cold during the summer. And I would call my dad and I would be like, “Are the grapes OK? Is everything OK? How are we gonna survive this?” So that’s definitely a very peculiar experience. And I definitely remember being aware that my dad wasn’t getting much sleep. Because of, of course, you’re very worried. And there’s so much that is outside of your control.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. And you guys didn’t live on the vineyard, right?

Marianna Giusti
No, actually, but we were there. We were there a lot. So there is a big house, which is the cellar where there is . . . there used to be a big refrigerator room, and then there is a massive water filling machine, and then there are huge wine vats. And then there are the ancient, because it used to be a vineyard and then it got redone and modernised. So there are many new wine vats, but there are also the old ones that I think are made in stone. And I remember as a child we would . . . it was so dangerous, we would play around them and they are maybe, I don’t know, five metres tall. And even if you fall inside, you know, if you fall inside a vat in which wine ferments, you can die intoxicated.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh, my god. Wow.

Marianna Giusti
Yes, from the fumes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You basically die, poisoned.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
It wasn’t all a horror story. Mari actually has some nice childhood memories. When she looks back on it, there’s a lot that she appreciates.

Marianna Giusti
We were beach kids because we come from the coast. So you never think whatever your parents do is cool. And for me there was a shift personally and starting to find this cool when I became what in Italy is considered drinking age, which is (chuckles) it was probably around 14, 15, (laughter). We started hosting. Well, they started letting me host these barbecues with all my school friends, and the estate is very rustic. It’s not like there’s a big manor with lovely rooms. We just camped out on the vineyard, me and my friends, and they loved it so much. And I started seeing it through their . . . through my friends’ eyes and started appreciating it, I think.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. All this said, enjoying your family’s vineyard and running your family’s vineyard are two very different things. And Mari has pretty good reason to be avoiding the latter.

So, Mari, I’d love to hear how it works. Like could you take us through what a vineyard owner actually does over the course of a typical year?

Marianna Giusti
Oh, my god. I, like, tried my best my whole life not to think of that. (laughter).

Lilah Raptopoulos
And here we are.

Marianna Giusti
So it’s extremely seasonal. So you follow the times of the land. And the weather. A time where all hands are needed is definitely fall, which is also the time when you harvest. And after that, you know, first you need to clean and separate the various parts of the grape and then they get pressed and then they need to ferment and then they need to be tasted and mixed and tasted and mixed. And the wine needs to age and it needs to be, I don’t know, separated. It’s really, really chemical. I think something that helped my father was the fact that he had this background in structural and hydraulic engineering. So he’s a total nerd about all things chemistry, physics, mechanics, because there are so many parts of winemaking. There are actually, yeah, there are few really nerdy. They’re really detailed. You really need to know, yeah, chemistry, how machines work and things like that.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So I’m curious now that I have made you go through all of the stages and all of the things you’ve wanted to forget, I would love to talk through the risks.

Marianna Giusti
Yeah. So there are so many variables literally outside your control in winemaking and the times are so slow. Just to harvest after planting, imagine, you need to wait at least three years. And then depending on what wine you’re producing, you’re going to have to wait for a year or even more. The machinery is . . . I mean, the land before the machinery is so expensive. If you’re buying planted land in regions with a good terroir or appellation, that can be €2mn an hectare.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Wow.

Marianna Giusti
Or 6mn per hectare. Yeah, I’ve seen price points like that. Imagine a vineyard tractor costs like a new Porsche.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, you said that.

Marianna Giusti
Now combine that with variables that of course exist in any enterprise, but the variables here result in you losing potentially the entirety of the annual revenue. So if you pair that kind of cost with that kind of risk, you can easily see why it’s such a risky, dangerous business.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. And the variables are weather and unforeseen problems like bacteria getting in your wine or in your grapes.

Marianna Giusti
Exactly. Absolutely. Something that I think there is a lot of ignorance around is how wine, compared to other alcoholic drinks, is prone to bacteria and contamination. Well before harvest, it’s really the shape of the fruit because there are all the nooks and crannies where bacteria can easily nestle in and during the vinification process, because the alcohol percentage is so low, for example, compared to a drink like whisky, it’s very easy for there to be contaminations during the vinification process. And the only way you can avoid that is really to have a near-obsessive hygiene regime.

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK, so these are a lot of risks. Are there more?

Marianna Giusti
Once everything is done and you have a delicious bottle of wine, you then enter a market that is entirely, luridly saturated.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right, totally.

Marianna Giusti
And just imagine going to a wine fair and trying to sell a product surrounded by tens of thousands of people. They’re trying to sell exactly the same product from the same region.

Lilah Raptopoulos
You know, it’s really interesting Mari because, like, we’ve known each other for years now, we’ve worked together. And I didn’t know that you knew so much about winemaking, like the things that you’re telling me. It’s so amazing, like the detail with which you understand this thing that you just, like, don’t do in your day to day, and that never comes up and that we don’t talk about. Tell me why you don’t want to do it.

Marianna Giusti
Well, I definitely don’t want to do it because — “traumatise” is probably a very strong word, but it definitely left a strong impression on me. Realising how financially concerned my parents was when I was growing up. I also remember when I was around 16, 17, 18, my dad taking me along to wine events and wine fairs and that’s an extremely male-dominated, like, excruciatingly boring environment for me. I would, like, cry from boredom. Yeah, and so I wasn’t interested in doing that. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. Interesting. And do you remember the first time you tried the wine from your vineyard?

Marianna Giusti
You know, again, as an Italian, I probably first had it mixed with water when I was eight or something. (chuckles)

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Marianna Giusti
But it’s so funny because our wines are so heady and full bodied and thick. And so there are these really strong, intense Italian wines. And I’m in love with the French . . . aromatic French white, some fizz like Chablis, Crémant de Loire, champagne . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh, no.

Marianna Giusti
So, yeah, that’s an ongoing joke in my family.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Mari, I have a couple of questions about, like this moment in wine history. We have had a lot of wine experts on the show. We’ve had the inimitable Jancis Robinson, our wine columnist, a few times. We recently had André Hueston Mack on, the sommelier. And they’ve talked about how changing weather conditions are changing wine a lot. Like global warming is actually, in a weird way, making British wine pretty good. And I’m curious if it’s changing your family’s vineyard or if it’s making things harder or different for your family to manage.

Marianna Giusti
Yeah, it’s definitely changing the world of wine. It’s definitely shifting quality or international recognition to regions that wouldn’t normally be associated with that. And our vineyard is definitely slated to be on the front line of wine climate change, being so low on sea level and close to the Mediterranean Sea.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Have your family and you noticed any changes over the last, like, 20 years?

Marianna Giusti
Yeah, absolutely. There is much less consistency around temperatures and weather conditions throughout the season. And so there is a lot of pressure, I think on the summer. For example, last summer I was in Italy intermittently and it really wasn’t as warm as you would have expected. And the plants really need that time to ripe and become really rich and full. Also bear in mind that the way you plant the vineyards is very strategic to the type of wine that you want to obtain. So for example, our vineyard has very high plant density that results in roots density, that creates competition within the roots, making them go deeper and deeper and yielding grapes that are very rich and very select in a way.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Wow. That is so interesting.

Marianna Giusti
But then you do that and imagine that the conditions change and replanting is so expensive. So I don’t, I really don’t envy winemakers at the moment because, yeah, there are phenomena that are entirely unforeseeable and the investments that are necessary to adapt are ridiculous. So it’s a very challenging time.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Before I let Mari go, we wanted to talk about one more thing that she has very strong feelings about, and that’s the phenomenon of natural wine. It’s wine that’s made, quote unquote, “naturally”. So with organic grapes and using fewer no additives like sulphates. It’s supposed to be this more ancient, healthier way to make wine. But Mari doesn’t buy it. She thinks wine production has changed from ancient times for a reason.

Marianna Giusti
I find it kind of annoying that there’s a lot of ignorance around what natural wine is. So for example, you can have a natural wine where cultivation of the plants and the land . . . so the vineyard part of winemaking is organic, but the vinification process necessarily is not. And I think that that’s great. And I also think that if these methods and systems and techniques took millennia to hone. There are a variety of good reasons, some of which have to do with health and hygiene. I don’t know.

I can tell you, I was at this really expensive and hip natural wine bar in Florence around Christmas, and there a glass of natural wine is around €9, and you can literally tick off all the boxes of winemaking mistakes, having one of those glasses. Like, I was never able to finish a glass there. The level of acidity, the absence of aroma, the . . . how they resemble vinegar. They taste like salad, they taste like leaves. They have like such low percentages of alcohol that it’s almost like drinking juice.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right, right.

Marianna Giusti
This said, there are many excellent natural wines, but unfortunately, many of them, in my opinion, in the hospitality industry at the moment, are getting away with murder. And I look forward to a time where we will have the same level of scrutiny and knowledge around natural wine than we do around traditional wine.

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK. Last question, Mari: Do you ever see yourself changing your mind about this?

Marianna Giusti
Oh, my god.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Like, can you imagine a world where you turn back around and you move to Tuscany and you take over the family business?

Marianna Giusti
I have to say I complain a lot, but at the end of the day, it’s a nice back-up plan to have at the back of my mind.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.

Marianna Giusti
So whenever I’m, like, I’m really upset about an article or about my job, I think, “You know what, I could always go back to Tuscany and make wine.” But there is something that is slightly more realistic than the estate. There is this very old manor that we currently don’t have the money to renovate, and it’s, like, it’s completely derelict. And one of the dreams that I have is to just be a writer and move there and redo it and run a tiny boutique hotel overlooking the vineyard there. That would be nice.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh. OK, why don’t you take me with you? (laughter).

Marianna Giusti
Come, please. Please.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I will write. Yeah, I will write my magnum opus and drink your wine. And you can write. (laughter)

Marianna Giusti
We can colla — I’m telling you, my wine is great for writing.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, I’m sure it is. 

Marianna Giusti
It’s nice and strong.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I believe it. Mari, thank you so much. This is awesome.

Marianna Giusti
Pleasure. Thank you.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show this week. Thank you for listening to FT Weekend, the Life and Arts podcast of the Financial Times. Mari’s piece is in the show notes alongside a few relevant columns from our wine columnist Jancis Robinson. Also in the show notes is a link to an excellent discount on an FT subscription. That is also at ft.com/weekendpodcast.

As you know, we love hearing from you. You can email us at ftweekendpodcast@ft.com. The show is on Twitter @FTWeekendPod, and I am on Instagram and Twitter, but mostly Instagram talking to all of you @LilahRap. Stay in touch. Message me. Tell your friends about the show. All of that really helps us.

Next week, we’re thrilled to have the winner of the International Booker Prize joining us, Georgi Gospodinov. Georgi speaks English, but his novel Time Shelter was translated from Bulgarian. So his translator, Angela Rodel, joins us also. And we talk about the process of translating such a beautiful poetic book into English.

I am Lilah Raptopoulos, and here is my talented team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Molly Nugent is our contributing producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Special thanks this week to Manuela Saragosa. Have the best weekend and we’ll find each other again next week.