Kat Nyman: Harvesting with Lammidia
Eastern-Ontario representative, Kat Nyman, shared her experience harvesting with Lammidia.
Highlights
- Lammidia is about producing a wide range of wines that are both exceptionally drinkable – full of life, energetic, interesting, gastronomic – and that reveal the heart and soul of beautiful, rugged Abruzzo, the vintage, and the people who make them.
- The people who make the wines follow the commandment - UVA E BASTA (grapes and THAT’S IT, no S02, ever). These are the ultimate natural wines made with organically grown grapes. There is no intervention nor manipulation, and 0/0 always.
- The team at Lammidia is seeking to make serious and age-worthy wines from their Abruzzese vineland… and it shows!
It’s 6:45am and we’re sitting in the back of our boss’ car which is flying down the winding roads that lead us away from the Adriatic sea and into the Gran Sasso mountains for another day of work. Many hills and hairpin turns later and we arrive in Villa Celiera. It’s here, in this 12th century mountain-top commune, where Lammidia finds its roots.
The original promise of founders Marco Giuliani and Davide Gentile, uva e basta (grapes and that’s it!) remains the same, but over the past 14 years so much else about the project has evolved. We learn that the small team (Davide, Marco and three friends) has been working towards being entirely self-sufficient, and now rely heavily on fruit from their own vineyards and rented parcels and less and less from growers. In their vineyards which are surrounded by olive groves and lush forests they work entirely by hand and ‘intervene’ only when necessary to combat the increasingly common threat of powdery mildew with treatments of copper and sulphur.
We split our time working harvest between their mountainside vineyards and two cellars – the first, Lammidia ‘originale’ in the Villa Celiera and the second, the newer Lammidia ‘urbani’ which is in an old tile factory in the seaside city of Pescara.
Their winemaking process is so simple I often wonder if I’m missing something. After we pick and process some of the healthiest fruit I’ve ever seen – either by hand or by foot, and eat a long lunch of pasta and arosticini (the local delicacy), of course, we make sure everything is in the correct vessel, be it concrete, amphora or stainless steel and let the wild fermentations do their thing. We taste and taste and taste again, following the wines through their ferments making sure everything is healthy and clean. We rack the wines once when the fermentation is over and…that’s it. There’s no filtration and no sulphur added – ever.
The wines that are made in the cantina in the mountains go through elevage and are bottled there, likewise at ‘urbani’ – imparting the unique energy of either place onto the wines.
For people who constantly tell us to ‘not worry’ - Davide and Marco spend a lot of energy thinking about what could go wrong on any given day. Because they won’t compromise in the vineyard or cellar, they sometimes have to abandon wines in pursuit of releasing only what meets their increasingly high standards of quality. As Marco and Davide themselves evolve, so too does the project. While remaining ever-drinkable, the team at Lammidia is seeking to make serious and age-worthy wines from their Abruzzese vineland…and it shows.
Two months of harvest and living in Abruzzo fly by. We get to know a rotating cast of characters, family and friends who stop into the cellars to supervise (always around mealtimes, go figure), we enjoy many, many bottles of wine at the local wine bar, Don Gennaro, and evenings at the beach when we can sneak away. The sun starts it’s northerly retreat, and our harvest wraps up as quickly as it began. We come home forever changed by the experience and grateful to the Lammidia famiglia.
Grazie mille a te. Amore e BASTA!
PS - ‘Lammidia’ is the Abruzzese dialect word for the charm to ward off the evil eye - an essential pre-harvest ritual performed by Davide’s Nona!
- Kat Nyman
The Living Vine team asked Kat some follow-up questions about her experience:
TLV: Kat, what are some of the most memorable things that Davide and Marco said?
Kat: Davide and Marco are exceptionally passionate people. Everything they said had some emphasis on it - which can also be thought of as them just being Italian. They are funny. They could probably be described as ‘idealistic’ re: their absolute, outright refusal to use any sulphur (not by me, I don't like that word), but they were totally open minded about nearly everything else.
One of my favourite conversations though, was with Davide at lunch one day. We were having a bit of a debate about various wines and wine styles… and he said (somewhat ironically) ‘if you think you know all there is to know about a subject, you might as well be dead’.
TLV: What are they like? What was your one best moment to highlight?
Kat: They are SO welcoming, generous and fun. They couldn’t possibly be more different from each other and nicely balance out the team. Davide is more business and marketing minded. Marco is a little more ‘rustic’ and in my mind, southern-italian – he has great instincts about winemaking and in the vineyards, and he’s absorbed so much knowledge from his friends making wine in other places.
By the way, they are obsessed with the Jura; they drove 11 hours there and 11 hours back, only to be there for 36 hours so they could pick grapes at Overnoy and visit at Tissot and with their friend Stephane!
