There is no doubt that the estate’s vineyards are the beating heart of my work.Everything begins in the vineyards.

The first fruits of my labours and the labours of my co-workers come into being there. And the vineyards need my constant care throughout the year.

I have to keep an eye on what they need and when they need it, not only to bring home healthy grapes to make into wine, but also because they are part of a delicately-balanced habitat.

In Monforte d’Alba, in the subzone of Castelletto, where my cellar is located, there is a great variety of biodiversity.

The area’s many vineyards are offset by forests, fruit trees, hazelnut trees and meadows.

I am personally committed to leaving my surrounding environment untouched: 30% of the estate’s area has been maintained or replanted as forest. Within this uncultivated, there is an educational area dedicated to truffles, an orchard, a hazelnut grove and also beehives.

Areas such as these are ever more rare, despite their importance to the ecosystem and the local fauna which still take refuge in them.

Each season, I’m lucky enough to meet up with some of these inhabitants, even if it is often for the very briefest of  moments.

For example, this past spring I often exchanged morning greetings with a hare frolicking in the courtyard; it became almost a daily occurrence to see it dash out and then disappear into a hedge.

During the harvest, when the grape clusters are nearly ripe and ready for picking yet another visitor confirms how good they are. Roe deer find them delicious–it would seem I’m not the only one who adores these sweet grapes!

Even badgers like a stroll among the vines. And how do I know this? Because they always leave very tangible ‘evidence’ that they’ve been there.

Sometimes in the evening, a fox steals out from the edge of a path, with its fluffy rust-red tail. It’s a rare treat to see one.

Ladybugs, butterflies, bees and earthworms are a signs of a lively, silent nature hard at work.

Over the days spent among the vines, I often come across a bird’s nest among the leaves. Robins and blue tits are the most usual, but they are becoming ever more difficult to spot. It is exactly for this reason that we have placed birdhouses in the small wood below the cellar, to help the birds build nests. We add balls of fat and seeds in winter to provide them with food during the cold season.

Shortly we’ll start on a new project which I’m especially enthusiastic about: a circuit with various stops for families with small children. Its purpose is to get to know the vineyard and the different types of environment around it, as well as offering a chance to enjoy a day out in the fresh air.

I would like to share what is closest to my heart: these vineyards that are home, but not just home to me.

They are also a refuge and a safe haven for other living creatures that I feel a great responsibility for looking after.

I remember being little on cold winter afternoons with my grandmother recounting stories of the Piedmontese witches or

“Masche”

(pronounced mas-keh).

I was half-afraid and half-charmed by these stories that had women as heroines with magical powers. My grandmother told me about these women who lived alone, and had black cats and nocturnal animals accompanying them out at dusk to mutter curses and spells.

These women and their rites could influence the harvest of crops and grapes and even the health of people in the village.

They were blamed for drought, sick farm animals or unfortunate accidents in the fields. They could make things disappear and reappear in strange locations; how often did I hear “aj sun le masche!!”, or ‘it must have been the witches’! whenever my granny couldn’t find her glasses. And I laughed, ‘but Granny, they’re on top of your head!’I don’t want to recount the stories people told here, but rather how I looked at it, growing up. As I said before, most of the women who were considered ‘Masche’, were solitary women who had had a misadventure in life, or simply preferred to live as they pleased, without giving importance to what people around them thought.

These women, who frightened “normal” people, I would consider anticonformist, free and courageous.

Independence and choices that go against the grain often scare people who are afraid of the unfamiliar. All the more so if the anti-conformist was a woman. Irrepressible women who made bold choices, choosing to ignore the dictates of fathers, husbands or whomever else to keep them happy.

And instead, who followed their own desires even at the price of being viewed as a malevolent witch. I’m inclined to think that the legend of the witches came about because of limited knowledge in the areas of medicine, veterinary medicine and agronomy. Without a rational explanation of events, someone to blame was needed to explain the ‘why’ of each misfortune. The easiest and most efficient solution was to find a scapegoat, so much the better if it was a solitary woman with an unusual, if not wholly outlandish lifestyle.

Women have always had to work twice as hard to obtain freedoms that we take for granted today: choosing which clothes to wear, who to marry or if to marry at all, which job to do–in short to make choices regarding their own lives. Perhaps it is in some way thanks to these ‘Masche’ that we can now live our lives as we wish, and make alternative choices that in the time of the witches would have been looked at askance.

So hurray for the women with superpowers like courage, tenacity and a revolutionary spirit, ready to challenge any prejudice or superstition!