Between wine and hats there’s sometimes a connection: tradition and craft production.
In Los Angeles for the opening of Hats on Film (currently on view at the IIC), Giorgiana Corsini, curator of the exhibit with Neri Torrigiani, took the chance to introduce the story of family owned wineries in Tuscany. “Some of these,” she explains, “belong to famous families, whose story is deeply connected to the history of the Tuscan Region.” Including her own.
“Our wine is a handicraft product, because it is made with hands. This makes our wine completely different form the industrial production. A handicraft product is always the same: our wine has been produced since the Eleventh Century. It carries with it history, culture, and flavors.” Following the tradition is important, but we can’t lock the contemporary world out. “We can in fact learn from the new winemakers,” Principessa Corsini says. “Some of their new techniques can be of help for the production, without interfering with the quality. They can, on their hand, learn from us when it comes to taste, flavor, quality, history.”
But not all the craft productions seem to go towards the same directions. While artisan wine is becoming more and more popular, and there are now schools dedicated to it, other kinds of production are facing a difficult moment.
“I’m a pessimist, and I see the small artisans suffocated by taxes and by the competition with low quality products, which of course are much cheaper. Moreover, for too long higher education has been preferred to the manual labor. It is also true that the trend is changing now, and young people are coming back to our botteghe. But it’s a long and difficult process; they have lost continuity, and it takes time to catch up with a labor that requires training and constant exercise.”
It is true, more and more people have chosen to dedicate to the artisan labor or to the small production of handicraft. We wonder why. “They come back because the quality of life is absolutely priceless. You might not make a lot of money, but if you speak to those people, they will tell you that life pays them back in some other way.”
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