The Uncle Who Replaces One Vine at a Time
The vineyard was planted in 1971. Some of it has died.
The normal thing to do is take out the row. Replant the whole block, accept you've lost fifteen years, get on with it. Cleaner. Easier to work. Everyone does it.
He replaces them one at a time. A dead plant comes out, a young one goes in beside its neighbours, and the row carries on being a 1971 row with a few young faces in it.
It's slower in every way. The new vine gets crowded by the old roots around it. It takes years to give anything back. You have to remember which ones you put in and when, because from the road it all looks the same.
I ask why and get a shrug.
Because otherwise you don't have a 1971 vineyard any more. You have a 2026 vineyard standing where one used to be.
That's the whole argument. Nobody wrote it down. It's a decision he makes every year, alone, in a row nobody is watching, and its only defence is that in thirty years somebody will taste something they couldn't have tasted otherwise.
Around us the cellar is loud. Fermentation running. Chardonnay going in. Thirty new barrels arriving from Burgundy in the morning. All of it visible and urgent and happening.
The actual work is one man putting a single vine in the ground.
Conterno Fantino was founded in Monforte d'Alba in 1982 by Claudio Conterno and Guido Fantino. The estate farms 27 hectares, all within Monforte, and is certified organic. Its Ginestra holdings include Sorì Ginestra and Vigna del Gris.
