5.1 dialogue with the market

Thanks to mutual collaboration, they gradually made their way and began to meet and get to know many restaurateurs, hospitality operators, people who dedicated themselves to serving wine in various areas of Italy and the world. Gradually, but in a very spontaneous and concrete way, many friendships and market collaborations were born.
“How can we not remember – Luciano suggests – the privileged relationships with Marcello Crini, Guido di Costigliole, Felicin in Monforte d’Alba, Gian Bovio of La Morra, Pier Bergadano at Borbore di Vezza d’Alba, Cesare Giaccone at Albaretto della Torre, the Ferretto brothers of Cascinalenuovo in Isola d’Asti and still others? Above all, the satisfaction I received from the personal collaboration with Felicin in Monforte d’Alba comes to mind: it was the early Nineties, 1992 or 93. Nino Rocca, Giorgio’s son, was beginning to work in the family restaurant and had very good relationships with several winegrowers in Monforte d’Alba. Among others, he had a fine synergy with the owner of a Nebbiolo for Barolo vineyard located in the heart of the Bussia of Monforte and was looking for a company that would manage the vineyard and then vinify the produced grapes.”
“Knowing the various producers, – Nino Rocca specifies – I had imagined that the ideal interlocutor to develop that task was indeed Luciano Sandrone. So, I tried to convince him to take care of it. But he was hesitant. On the other hand, we know how Luciano was: shy, but not only, full of that typically Piedmontese attitude that expresses prudence in one's actions and great attention towards one's interlocutors. I tried to dispel all his doubts, specifying the terms of the agreement. I told him that he would take care of working the vineyard, vinifying the grapes and making the wine as only he knew how. These were the exact words. I would take care of paying the rent to the vineyard owner. In exchange, Luciano would then give me a part of the bottles produced. And so we are all calm … I had concluded. The agreement lasted at least 5 or 6 years with full satisfaction for everyone, until that vineyard was no longer available at the owner's request.”
There was no need for a restaurateur to buy wines from all the producers in the group. It was enough for them to buy even from just one and they became everyone's favorite. This was pure synergy because it helped each member of the group to find confidence, to share choices with the world of distribution, and to identify the most appropriate market solutions.
Obviously, the companies in the group were not all the same, especially in terms of size: however, most had a limited quantity of wines and bottles for each label and, for this reason, were not always able to satisfy the market demand that arrived.
The collaboration with restaurateurs and wine shop owners effectively channeled towards these companies also some sales agents, the so-called “wine representatives”: they were figures who came from an obscure past, often difficult and tiring, when quantity was sold more than quality or secure origin. In those very years, the figure of the wine representative was becoming increasingly strategic, useful for qualifying a company and asserting its identity. And, in those Eighties and Nineties, figures of representatives began to emerge who preferred to work with small agricultural companies, often recently established and little known, rather than with historical structures with greater size and organization.
“Among these figures – Luciano recalls – I am pleased to point out the emblematic one of Massimo Rustichini, a representative who frequented the world of Veronelli and who worked mainly in Versilia. His work and his closeness were very useful to us: on the one hand, he made us known and appreciated by young and enterprising operators; on the other, he began to distribute our wines in his area, creating a sort of chain effect that, little by little, brought our labels to the attention of the rest of the national territory too. One after another, many of these market operators come to mind: Enrico Provera for the Turin area, Paul Farinasso for the Cuneo area, Luca Dallara in Parma, Luciano Gheduzzi in Bologna, Sauro Rafanelli in Tuscany, Diego Amaducci in Imola, Roberto Scopo in Brescia, Carlo Barolo in Varese and many others.”