The president of Assoenologi, Riccardo Cotarella, gave an interview to the Rai 3 television program, Report, which aired on Sunday evening, Feb. 18, 2024. Professor Vittorio Gerbi from the University of Turin also spoke.
In this video we offer an approximately 25-minute excerpt of Cotarella’s entire interview with the Report program.
For those who would like to watch the entire broadcast, this is Rai’s link: https://www.raiplay.it/dirette/rai3/Report—Puntata-del-18022024-08d94318-11d4-4e37-8bd4-a2f3f619a8f8.html.
Report’s preconceived thesis (as also reflected in the summary accompanying the video on Raiplay), is that large portions of production aim for standardized flavors obtained through the use of technologies made available by food chemistry, as opposed to small producers who create their wine from vineyard to bottle. A thesis that was all the rage in the 1980s and that the history of Italian wine has largely modified, demonstrating how it makes no sense to lump everything together.
The talk by Professor Vincenzo Gerbi
Also the Professor Vincenzo Gerbi, Ordinary Professor, University of Turin, after responding point by point to the episode aired in December (read here), takes a position with respect to the Rai Tre broadcast, which, for the second time, creates confusion instead of informatione. “We have to thank Report because the two episodes devoted to wine will provide study material for Enology and Viticulture courses, distinguishing true from false from a scientific point of view.” After discussing the products granted in wine production, the Feb. 18 episode put the lSelected yeasts as a putative factor for homologation. Yeast, however, is a tool for enhancing characteristics, not a trick to homogenize, and diversity in wines lies mainly in the seeds and skins and thus starts with the quality of the grape.
The use of yeasts
“Yeasts used in winemaking are not the result of strange contrivances and are always isolated from grapes or wine, like everyone else. The advantage is the ability to optimize the fermentation process: varietal yeasts are selected because they have enzymes that hydrolyze the aromatic glycosides already present in the grape, thus enhancing its olfactory characters. In contrast, selected generic yeasts, always isolated from grapes or wine, are capable of optimizing the production of fermentation esters,” cProfessor Gerbi continues. No health risks, then, quite the contrary: a good starter must or selected yeast means that sulfites, the subject of much debate today, are not used.
“Also, it is not necessarily the case that spontaneous fermentations are better, especially for the winemaking outcome. Pasteur’s findings on this issue, in fact, led him to. to the study of microbiology and the discoveries of modern medicine. Had he been able to dispose of them, he would probably have recommended the use of selected starter musts, as indeed master brewers have always done.” Gerbi concludes. If the broadcast emphasized the need for naturalness in the wine world, in fact, it is omitted that in beer, bread, and cheese, all products in which fermentations intervene, the use of selected microorganisms is constant because they might otherwise pose a health risk. In wine, which is acidic and alcoholic and therefore inhospitable to pathogenic bacteria, the only side effect of imperfect fermentations is the alteration of aromas and flavors. This does not mean opposing natural wines, but selecting and rewarding them only if they are good.
The hope of Onav, of which Gerbi is chairman of the Scientific Committee, is that the world of information, especially aimed at the general public, will learn to approach scientific issues with a greater sense of responsibility.
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