Angelo Gaja - message in Covid-19 crisis: Think different!
Posted on: 19-03-2020 om 16:17:11
| Karina Imschoot
Think differently, Angelo Gaja's mantra...
In dramatic days as we are experiencing them now, while fear and insecurity prevail, this confirms the bio of the great entrepreneur who not only holds the counter, but is also well aware of the moment. This with 80 years on his counter.
"We will not stop. My family and I make this commitment: we will not fire any of our 160 employees. In fact, we're going to hire more people." Besides, in the age of the Internet, his "thinking differently" is reading "just the newspapers.
And in the age of hyperspecialization, his vision is of the craftsman: a "specialist in nothing who knows how to do a little bit of everything: the grower, the oenologist, the administrator, the marketing expert.
And he knows how to control imperfection, because perfection does not exist. An overworked wine loses its soul. In years of "everything is allowed" and "individualism" he has his "different" vision of responsibility - "We have learned that public money is more important than ours. Those duties come before rights. That you can't just ask, but first and foremost give" - and the importance of relationships.
High priority: "protecting our products, our identity", in an attempt to "avoid special effects, such as Collisioni, the festival that brings a hundred thousand people to Barolo. In Burgundy, they would never do this, because they fiercely protect their territory".
Here is the dialogue. "Here is harvested 20 days earlier, sometimes a month. In summer, the soil tends to become as hard as cement, and we have to take care of the earthworm, which is the architect of the earth: it moves it, gives it oxygen, makes it alive. The areas of Barolo and Barbaresco remain limited, but less valuable vineyards are planted in the upper Langa, where only the hazelnut used to take root. The earth is changing. It appeals to us. And we too must change. How? "We have a geologist, two botanists, two entomologists."
What does the entomologist do all day? "There are new parasites in the vineyards. Some we never had, others didn't survive the harsher winters. Because we don't want to use pesticides, in short poisons, we fight them by creating parasites. It's called biological control: against the Asian bug there is the Japanese wasp. There are companies that make insects, such as the Biolab of Cesena, which provides us with anagyrus and cryptolaemus, the two natural antagonists of the cochineal, which pierces the leaves and pollutes the grapes. Professor Andrea Lucchi of the University of Pisa taught us sexual confusion".
A reflection that we think is an important help in looking at these difficult days, "thinking differently" is the one to which the question of whether or not "Le Roi" believes in God answers: "He who works under the sky and has the climate as a partner can only believe in something supernatural that protects us. I grew up in processions: for rain, against hail..."
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