Roberto
Giovanni has come a long way since I met him a year ago. While he is the most dedicated and passionate worker I’ve met, he lacked the spark and drive to create something more. He was more or less, maybe just stuck or content with his life in little Cupra. Happy to be doing what he loved and he loved what he did and that was enough for him. Well, that was last fall. When I returned this year, Giovanni became a different person.
When I returned in the spring, he was on the cusp of purchasing his very own vineyard and cellar with two friends. Over spring and summer, I’ve watched him go through the ups and down of making this purchase. Italian bureaucracy couldn’t be more clear during this time. Meetings, paperwork, more meetings, and more paperwork. I did find it interesting that when they made an offer to the property owner and he accepted, that the place was still not quite theirs. After the acceptance of a price, the surrounding property owners have a chance to meet or exceed the offer if they want the land to expand their own farms. I thought that was an interesting law, that I am pretty sure we don’t have in Washington. Lucky for them, nobody wanted it.
I really enjoyed brainstorming ideas for their business/farm name…and ended up coming up with what I want to call my next batch of homemade wine…which I’ll get to someday…But one day as we were lying on the beach in Vasto, Giovanni thought of “Ca’Liptra” which means the bud of a flower in which the grape grows from. I liked this because of the significance of the word and it sounded nice. The problem with most of the ideas we came up with was that they didn’t really sound very marketable. They didn’t roll off the tongue as easily and just weren’t very pleasant. But here we are…Ca’Liptra.
If Giovanni isn’t harvesting or have his ear to the phone, he’s sleeping. That’s basically been his life the past few weeks. I went to help during the first weekend of harvest at Ca’Liptra. The guys needed all the help they could get! What people normally get the weekdays to do, the guys had to complete in one day. It was great to meet Roberto’s family and harvest with everyone. But after that week of working everyday, I decided I couldn’t keep volunteering to harvest with them on the weekends. I needed time to collect myself, and manual labor just isn’t for me. Luckily they have now finished their harvest thanks to the good people in their lives.
I am looking forward to seeing what Ca’Liptra will become, and it’s been such a good experience to be with them at the beginning stages of this new venture. Giovanni seems to be happy when he’s not busy being stressed out, and the guys are all so excited for this new venture.
