Interview with Mr. Rolando Bettarini, owner of the Tuscany based wine farm “Fattoria di Piazzano”

fattoria di piazzano

Interview with Mr. Rolando Bettarini, owner of the Tuscany based wine farm “Fattoria di Piazzano”

A strange and somewhat (pleasantly) disturbing feeling.
The facts:
As usual before expressing an opinion and/or judgments we wanted to gather some information, so we visited the website (www.fattoriadipiazzano.it) of the Fattoria Piazzano to draw some inspiration.

What has pleasantly disturbed and struck us most are some passages identified while reading some of the articles we found on the website.

The feeling we had could be summarized by what Mr. Bettarini claims, which is that the land, the vineyards,  have taken on a somewhat animal form and therefore cannot be considered mere “things”, incapable of communication, but as living beings with whom to engage in a pleasant dialogue, tell tales, exchange impressions and memories, perhaps of when, after the periods of hunting and belligerence ended, it was decided to settle permanently in this place.

We read of skeletons and herds, of Paleolithic and centuriation and also of respect of what surrounds us and makes us appreciate the beautiful things in life. Marvelous!

How not to notice the philosophy? And yet Epicurus, even though our memory has cleared some space to receive other information, brings back to our senses many “pleasurable” considerations and perceptions. Oh well! We are in Tuscany after all and we even without intending to feel it.
Reopening our eyes…

… The Fattoria di Piazzano is a farm owned by Mr. Bettarini and Mrs. Ilaria & C., located on the hills overlooking the town of Empoli, its overall size is 64 hectares, of which 33 are vineyards, 6 of olive trees, 6 devoted to grain production and the rest is occupied by woodlands and rural and civil buildings.

Mr. Bettarini takes care of both the technical management of the vineyard and of the enological one in the winery. He became aware of Martignani’s technology during the EIMA exhibition in Bologna in 2000 and in the very next season he bought the first two “Martignani-KWH” pneumatic mist blowers currently used in the farm.

In the vineyard health protection, Mr. Bettarini has always given instruction to his collaborators to treat every other row, that is to go through a row with the tractor and towed mist blower and skip the very next one and go to the second next.
The volumes used in these treatments are approximately 90 l/ha (regardless of the treatment type: peronosparicide, oidicide, etc..) because with one refill, 1000 l, the operator covered about 10.5 ha and with a speed of 5.5 km/h, was able to complete the treatment in 2.5/3 days, and this is considered an excellent production result considering the situation of the majority of the Tuscan’s farms, divided into many patches and far from each other and with various maneuver difficulties at the entrance of every row due to steep slopes.
While using both mist blowers at the same time the times were almost halved (1 day and a half).

Mr.Bettarini, has therefore noted that thanks to the Pneumatic Mist Blowers Martignani-KWH, the time lost while refilling the tank and in the displacements visibly reduced, but the biggest advantage consisted in a greater efficacy and promptness of the pesticide treatments, this characteristic is very important these days with the increasingly adverse and unpredictable seasons’ weather.
It is interesting to underline that in the management of the vineyard health protection, Mr. Bettarini used the same volumes of pesticide mixture (90 l/ha) for both fungicide and insecticide treatments.

Once again in Tuscany, once again a center!

Cheers
Luca Bellettini
Antonio Fimiani

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)