Carpineto, Producer of Renowned Tuscan Wines Creates a 4-Hectare Oasis for the Bees
When wine is the sentinel of biodiversity and ambassador of respect for the planet, a concrete action for the care of the environment is what we want to here. Here is a story of an alliance when a winegrower becomes a beekeeper. Antonio Mario Zaccheo, co-founder of Carpineto in 1967 with Giovanni Carlo Sacchet, gives life to BEEdrome, a 4-hectare oasis of happiness to agriculture. The bees set up their houses at the Carpineto estate in the midst of wild flowers, grass and lavender. At Carpineto, there is sustainable agriculture and the bees or other pollinating insects have no risk of extinction because they are protected. Already for some years among the Vermentino vineyards at Tenuta di Gavorrano in Maremma, the bees have constructed their beehive around a trunk of a vine, a home that they have found in the best habitat rich in biodiversity.
“Making wine without killing bees and insects and without damaging the ecosystem has always been normal for us. The contribution that bees give to productions of agriculture and the maintenance of the biodiversity of the wild botanical species is immense. I felt indebted to them,” says Zaccheo.
“In fact, with their small “proboscis”, the tongue, they dry the sugary juices which, attacked by microorganisms, could damage the grapes,” continues Zaccheo. He spends more and more time on the Gavorrano estate among the five estates of Carpineto in Tuscany, considered the wildest with all those woods and Mediterranean scrub embracing the vineyards. “I thought of the danger that bees are running, and we with them, and in the name of survival and continuation of biodiversity, I decided to allocate a part of our land to a preparatory activity to increase the beekeeping heritage by providing these precious insects a field on which to thrive and multiply,” he adds.
To these vineyard bees, precious collaborators, Zaccheo has decided to dedicate 4 hectares of the estate and build a BEEdrome, as he has decided to call it, playing on an evident assonance. A pleasant open-air “alcove” full of flowers to live and thrive.
The Gavorrano estate is just a few kilometers from the Maremma Coast of Cala Violina, rich in woods and hilly fields, close to a small lake where frogs and spontaneous fish thrive. In fact, the first beehives were positioned between two fields in a plantation of ash trees. The first field is made up of about 2 hectares of alfalfa. The second, another 2 hectares, is sown with a flowering mix of perennial and annual species that provide nectar and pollen to the bees. It is what is needed for correct bee activity and to provide them with nourishment throughout the season. It is a miscellany of seeds for turf called “spring beekeeping” and composed of dill, bird’s-foot-trefoil, buckwheat, sainfoin, lupin alfalfa, white and yellow melilot, sulla, crimson clover, red clover, red clover, white mustard and yarrow.
“But that’s not all,” adds Zacchaeo, “we have also tried to think of a plant particularly loved by bees, lavender and we are experimenting with the inclusion of various types: true lavender; stoechas lavender; and dwarf lavender. The project is at the beginning and under development but our commitment in this direction is now consolidated and confirmed.”
Founded in Chianti Classico in 1967 by the Sacchet and Zaccheo families, Carpineto, still managed by the two families, cultivates 500 hectares of owned land in a sustainable and carbon-neutral way divided between 5 estates in the historic wine-growing areas of Tuscany: Chianti Classico; Vino Nobile di Montepulciano; Brunello di Montalcino; Alto Valdarno; and Maremma. Well known for its great denomination reds and some Super Tuscans and always at the top of national and international rankings, it exports the most prestigious DOCG wines to over 70 countries around the world of Tuscany. Wine tourism is practiced on the Montepulciano and Montalcino estates with a varied range of tasting proposals, walks in the vineyard, picnics and outdoor lunches. For Carpineto, wine is passion, emotion, nature, culture.
Carpineto
Località Dudda, 17/B
Greve in Chianti (FI), Italy
Tel: +39 055 8549062
Email: info@carpineto.com
Website: http://www.carpineto.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Carpinetowines/