“You use your nose, your mouth, and your eyes, and you know if you like it or not."

The grapes are not doctored with foreign yeasts, chemicals, sugars, or other ingredients that don’t begin and end with the grapes from a particular grower’s land. Anything that is used is natural, not manmade. The must, the “starter” for wine, is from the same vines that will produce what will become the wine a short time later. Nothing foreign, the grapes picked at the absolute exact time to reap the flavor when it’s at its absolute best are added to grapes from the very same vines, but were picked a short time before.

There are no chemicals used in the growing cycle. Every day the grower examines his vines. A leaf that’s a little brown, or that displays a sign of sickness is removed, by hand. Every day, he examines his vineyard and each individual plant, looking for harmful insects. Most of the time he doesn’t have to worry about the insects because he’s used the same processes that have been used since the time of the Romans to control the pests. And these processes are all natural.

“The ground has all the life you need to give birth to grapes ... A vine needs the earth to make a grape. Once you have that grape, you need the earth again to make wine.”

Some growers don’t use measurements, calibrations or scientific analysis of the wine to determine when it’s ready for the next step in the process of maturing; he uses his own senses and the moon, keeping careful track of its progress across the sky.

Esposito relates his reaction on his first sip of an appassimento wine made by Giuseppe Quintarelli (appassimento is a relatively uncomplicated, but delicate, easily ruined process of using grapes that are essentially rotten to make wine). The purchase price of this book is worth that description alone. He adds that while the exact methodology is well known, why Quintarelli’s wines are remarkable is not. Scientists have recreated the environment of his farm, reproduced his chemical conditions, materials, and climate. They’ve “… used the same grapes, grown in the same way. And they’ve never made anything close to a Quintarelli.”

In another section, Esposito talks about terroir. Originally a French term, it’s now commonly used to denote “a sense of place.” More specifically, it means that grapes grown in a certain region absorb and transmogrify the qualities and nuances of the land into the taste of the grape, and subsequently into the wine. The Quintarelli description above is a casebook example.