01 March 2021
Guido Berlucchi presents its first Sustainability Report, relative to the year 2019, the most comprehensive and detailed of any Italian sparkling wine denomination. Its commitment to a respectful viticulture for more than 20 years, has presently become a well thought outdocument shared with its community and directed to benefit all of Franciacorta.
“It is extremely exciting to welcome our very first Sustainability Report, documenting in 2019 the fruits of many years of work by us and by those who have worked with us, efforts that have constructed, here in the heart and origin of Franciacorta, our central vision,” said Arturo Ziliani, Guido Berlucchi’s CEO and Technical Director.
“Year after year, harvest after harvest, neither hailstorms, nor frosts, nor droughts have stopped our dream of creating a company with ever-heightened respect for the area in which we live in, protecting it as a heritage that cannot be degraded, and untiringly improving the quality of wines bearing the name of Franciacorta. Over the last 60 years, the wineries in Franciacorta have contributed to protecting and stewarding 3,000 hectares of our growing area by dedicating them to viticulture, thus creating a development model that is an alternative to the light and heavy industrial patterns that went from the 1970s to the 1990s, with their strong negative impacts on the environment.
“Today, sustainability, far from being some esoteric, abstract term, represents our winery’s concrete commitment to conceptualise and understand, in a comprehensive, detail-driven manner, the impact of our interventions across the spectrum of our own area, and, by studying and reducing them, we aim to fashion these activities into a sustainable and eco-compatible future.”
The G.B. 2019 Sustainability Report analyses a more than 20-year process and showcases the various quality achievements impacting the 85 hectares of estate vineyards belonging to the Franciacorta pioneer and category founder, as well as the approximately 450 hectares of those of its partner-growers.
Those achievements range from the campaign against soil impoverishment through the use of avant-garde and experimental technologies, to adaptation
to climate change through the utilisation of new winemaking approaches and introduction of more appropriate native grapes, such as Erbamat; and the reduction of resource consumption.
But Guido Berlucchi’s vision reaches far beyond matters strictly and directly related to wine production, extending just as importantly to the complex impacts on the socio-cultural fabric of its overall area.
“Sustainability in all its aspects, not just those regarding agriculture, is what we are focused on and acting upon today,, and that will be even more true in the future,” continues Arturo Ziliani. “That is why, in recent years, we have created projects such as Academia Berlucchi; why we were so set on producing the G.B. 2019 Sustainability Report; why we expanded the educational hospitality at our historical Palazzo Lana to better promote appreciation of “Destination Franciacorta”; and why, finally, we are designing Corporate Social Responsibility campaigns, which will focus on encouraging younger generations to re-connect with nature.
“We presently find ourselves at a very complex juncture, almost
at the opening of a history-making year for Guido Berlucchi, since 2021 will be the 60th anniversary of the very first bottle of Franciacorta, which we created. We want to greet that milestone with a message of positivity, determination, and awareness: that we have no other choice but to treat our Planet and those who live in it with exquisite care, each of us willingly doing our part.”
For the full text of the Report, please go to www.berlucchi.it
We take the best that Franciacorta has to offer us.
But we also commit to giving back.
