A few weeks ago I went to Rauscedo, a small town in the Friuli Venezia-Giulia region, on the border with Slovenia and Croatia. This area is renowned for excellent white wines from distinct grapes, most of them are original, that is widely grown in the last centuries. A real opportunity for me to increase my knowledge of the origins of wine from the plant, and an successful example of cooperation and solidarity among 200 associates. Rauscedo was already a country village -”borgo”- in the XIIIth cent., based nearby the river Meduna, which caused over the centuries may floodings and forced the natives to move, come back, start the crop growing again, in a constant effort to stay forever in such a fertile land. It took a long time to improve, in fact the lifestyle of the peasants got better in the early 1920’s, when they realized they’d never work it out without the help of the whole village. In those years an early nucleus of natives started to grow vines but didn’t start any Company.

According to the anecdotes told by ancestors, it was an Officer of the Royal Italian Army who taught a peasant the benchdrafting tachnique, in the hope to improve his life and the one of the family. The year 1933 was crucial, since the Company was officially established, but the Second Worls War didn’t help the business which nearly collapsed. At the end of it, Italy was in ruins but Italians were relieved by the regained peace and invested on their own skills and traditional crafts.

In 1948 the Company produced 3 million grafted cuttings, so that immigrants who had left Friuli before the War, came back home and renewed the local production. Today it amounts to 65 million a year, garanteede by 200 Associates able to assure a helathy, long-lived and high quality vines for great wines.

The 1950’s and 60’s marked the development of the economy and the national industry, so that winemakers realized how important was to use productive and deasease resistant vines. The range of different grapes in Italy was very varied, while Estates were too small for the production of many different wines. In 1968 the Vivai Rauscedo established an Experimental centre charge for the scientific selection of the best clones of the main national grapes used.

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