What the Vines Are Told
In 1974 the Cavallotto brothers let the grass grow between the rows.
At the time this was a genuinely stupid thing to do. Everyone knew you kept the ground bare. Bare ground looked like work. Grass looked like a farmer who had stopped caring.
The neighbours said so. Out loud. In a village this size, where the vineyards face each other across the road, that isn't a small thing to absorb.
They kept the grass. They stopped using herbicide. They carried on for another forty years while the rest of the region caught up and eventually arrived, in the last decade or so, with certification schemes and marketing language for the thing these two men had been quietly doing since before it had a name.
Alfio doesn't tell it as a triumph. When it comes up he's matter of fact. His father and uncle made a decision about the soil and then didn't revisit it.
The decision took an afternoon. The not revisiting took forty years.
From the top of Bricco Boschis you can see most of the Barolo villages at once. It occurs to me they could see him the whole time too.
Cavallotto has farmed the Bricco Boschis hill in Castiglione Falletto since Giacomo Cavallotto bought it in 1928. Permanent grass cover was introduced in 1974 and the estate has farmed without herbicides or synthetic pesticides since the 1970s. Alfio, Giuseppe and Laura Cavallotto, the fourth generation, run it today.
