For years I have been cultivating a dream: to revitalize the hills of Mondragon through agriculture. It is an area of the upper Treviso area abandoned since the sixties, attacked by brambles and bushland, which I have been recovering since I left my profession to return to my origins. It is a difficult and isolated area, which requires a lot of effort, but beautiful: from here you can see Venice...
My grandparents worked these hills, producing grapes, wine, figs and raising cows for their own subsistence. The recovery of this land began in 2012, in a gradual and surgical way, without large movements of land: we recover by planting new vineyards and restoring the old ones, making new terraces because this is an extreme land.
We are in the DOCG Prosecco Superiore but this is also an area suited to the cultivation of olive trees, figs, ancient varieties of pear trees and dogwood. Here chestnuts and wild herbs are harvested, very particular olive oil, honey, fig and chestnut beer, berry liqueur, pickles, herb, hop, dandelion, carlina and elderberry preserves are produced. And quality wine.
I started producing it in a small cellar, restored little by little by recycling a wooden garage door from the sixties (then I discovered that vins de garage are very fashionable...). My small production (three, the labels) goes together with the recovery of the entire ecosystem and each activity has its roots in tradition but also looks to the future, because it is practiced in a totally natural way .
MoVe stands for Mondragon-Venice but it also means movement and is a response, full of life, to the decade-long decline of agriculture . The objective goes beyond production, and is to create intelligent rural tourism : dry stone walls return to being a common good, old farmhouses are restored for hospitality, ancient paths host trekking, horseback riding or cycling itineraries, these places become drivers of lifestyles where well-being can be recovered.
And all of this has collaboration as its watchword, because I am always looking for dreamers like me.
Gabriele Perenzin
