Grandama red wine made with Shumei method natural farming
The New Testament Book of Matthew contains the following passage:
And as they were eating, Jesus… took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
The Santa Maria delle Grazie church in Milan, Italy, a World Heritage Site, contains Leonardo da Vinci’s mural The Last Supper. The painting is in the refectory, or dining hall, and monks who dined here must have been inspired by these words and hoped for the Savior’s blessing as they drank their wine. Many medieval monasteries had vineyards attached, and monks themselves made the wine for the sacrament. Many of the world’s top wines still produced today have their roots in these monastery vineyards.
About 80 kilometers south of Milan, in the municipality of Godiasco, is a winery known as Sacrafamilia. Roberto Zironi, the globally recognized authority on organic wine and director of the Department of Food Science at the University of Udine, says of Sacrafamilia: “It is made with a method that I would have thought completely impossible,” and “This is the only winery in Italy to pursue such uncompromising cultivation and harvesting methods so as to achieve the pinnacle of quality through natural agriculture.” How does Sacrafamilia differ from other wines? Refer to the table below:
And as they were eating, Jesus… took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
The Santa Maria delle Grazie church in Milan, Italy, a World Heritage Site, contains Leonardo da Vinci’s mural The Last Supper. The painting is in the refectory, or dining hall, and monks who dined here must have been inspired by these words and hoped for the Savior’s blessing as they drank their wine. Many medieval monasteries had vineyards attached, and monks themselves made the wine for the sacrament. Many of the world’s top wines still produced today have their roots in these monastery vineyards.
About 80 kilometers south of Milan, in the municipality of Godiasco, is a winery known as Sacrafamilia. Roberto Zironi, the globally recognized authority on organic wine and director of the Department of Food Science at the University of Udine, says of Sacrafamilia: “It is made with a method that I would have thought completely impossible,” and “This is the only winery in Italy to pursue such uncompromising cultivation and harvesting methods so as to achieve the pinnacle of quality through natural agriculture.” How does Sacrafamilia differ from other wines? Refer to the table below:
The Grandama vineyard
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Sacrafamilia wine |
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Wine produced through conventional agriculture
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Fertilizers / Pesticides |
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Absolutely no fertilizers or pesticides used. |
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Fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc. used. |
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Harvest period |
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Grapes harvested in October when they naturally become ripe. |
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Grapes harvested in August-September to obtain maximum yield, minimizing loss from rain-related rotting and incursion by insects and wild animals.Fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc. used. |
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Harvest method |
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Every single grape picked by hand, selecting for quality. Another careful screening takes place before the fermentation process. |
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Grapes are generally machine-harvested. |
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Yeast for fermentation |
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Grapes fermented only with natural yeasts carried to bunches of grapes by bees that naturally live in the vineyard environment. |
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Artificial yeasts added. |
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Sulfites |
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No added sulfites (wine naturally contains minute amounts of organosulfur compounds, which have natural antioxidant properties) |
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Sulfites added. |
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Winemaking process |
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Deep, rich flavor obtained through inclusion of entire grape, skin and all. |
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Additives included in order to obtain the taste and acidity preferred in wine tastings. |
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In winemaking today, the conventional wisdom is that high-quality wine cannot be made without adding chemical substances or other substances approved in organic agriculture. However, husband and wife team Anna and Domenico, devout Christians and proprietors of the Sacrafamilia vineyard, aim to produce wine worthy of Christ's words at the Last Supper in the Gospels, and have always used only organic grapes with nothing added but disease-preventing organic sulfur compounds. In 2008 they stopped using even these, in the pursuit of even purer wine, and they were faced with an enormous amount of manual labor and a diminished harvest. However, the resulting grapes were of unbelievable quality. One year after this transition, the flavor of their wine had been dramatically transformed, and they were more surprised than anyone. They had the wine analyzed by a Swiss research institution that employs revolutionary methods to analyze food according to its crystalline structure and vital energy, and the results gave the wine an overall ranking of 9 for vital energy and quality (average score for wine produced with conventional farming methods: 1-3). It was truly an astounding change.
Over the seven years since then, Sacrafamilia has produced three varieties of wine using all-natural farming methods. Granre (“Great King”) is a red wine made with a blend of grapes from mature vines, with deep and fragrant fruit tones and a noble and robust aroma.Gransol (“Great Sun”) is a golden, amber-tinted white wine that sparkles with the radiant bouquet of fully ripe green grapes, illuminating the depths of the drinker's spirit.
Over the seven years since then, Sacrafamilia has produced three varieties of wine using all-natural farming methods. Granre (“Great King”) is a red wine made with a blend of grapes from mature vines, with deep and fragrant fruit tones and a noble and robust aroma.Gransol (“Great Sun”) is a golden, amber-tinted white wine that sparkles with the radiant bouquet of fully ripe green grapes, illuminating the depths of the drinker's spirit.
Grandama (“Great Lady”) was Sacrafamilia's first wine produced through natural farming. It embraces the taster in its exquisite, rich yet smoothly rounded elegance, leaving a splendid finish. All three of these wines convey the life-affirming natural beauty of the vineyards, blessed by Mother Earth, where they originated. Tastings of the wine that “leaves sommeliers speechless” are held at the Pine View café. Please join in if you have the opportunity.
Domenico and Anna of Sacrafamilia
