feature / on the vine / Ca’del Bosco
quite successfully and often at very little cost. In those days, the area was well and truly in the back of beyond, with any available property uncultivated, either abandoned or woodland. Albano imagined it would become a smallholding with cattle, sheep, horses, and an orchard, and, as part of this strategy, a vineyard was planted in 1968 (under the guidance of Franco Ziliani of Guido Berlucchi), when Maurizio was just 12 years old. There was no ambition beyond supplying Berlucchi with
grapes and retaining some of the production for home consumption, as was the habit of so many in Italy at that time. It was also very early days for Italian fine wine. The Franciacorta DOC had been granted only the year before (1967) and Italy’s entire appellation system was itself so young that Franciacorta was just the fifth DOC to be announced. As was the norm in those early years, the Franciacorta DOC was for still wines as well as sparkling, and those still wines could be red or white, dry or sweet, or passito in style. Today’s reputation of Franciacorta as a great sparkling-wine terroir was thus a long way off. There were only 11 wineries making sparkling wine locally, and Guido Berlucchi represented 80 percent of all sparkling Franciacorta production. Franco Ziliani had been the first to produce sparkling Franciacorta as recently as 1961, making him the most experienced producer locally. This was why Albano asked him to plant a small vineyard and to teach Antonio Gandossi how to train and prune vines. So, it was by accident that Albano laid down the first piece of the jigsaw that would eventually become the famous Ca’del Bosco of today.
Boy on a bike After a few years of misbehavior at a couple of schools, Maurizio was sent by his parents to work on the docks of Manchester in the UK as a punishment. On return to Italy, he was exiled to Ca’del Bosc, where he was made to study accounting at the local college in Iseo. During the week, he grew to love Ca’del Bosc by riding his motorbike over its hills and through the woods, but he remained rebellious and had no idea what to do with his life. At the weekends, when his parents came to visit, he avoided confrontation by making the reverse trip to see his girlfriend in Milan.
In 1972, Maurizio went on a wine study trip to Burgundy, Champagne, and Paris, with a bus-load of Lombardian wine producers. He had told his mother he wanted to make wine, but in truth he simply fancied the opportunity to enjoy an unsupervised weekend in Paris at the age of 16. That might have been his intention, but his visit to Champagne was an eye-opener. He got it—not simply the quality of Champagne, the greatest sparkling wine in the world, but the branding of Champagne and how its deluxe cuvées could cross the boundaries of wine to become icons of haute couture and art. That and its proximity to Paris, which was also the capital of haute couture and art. For someone living in Milan, one of the four fashion capitals of the world, it struck a resonating chord, even if he could not have cared less about fashion when he was in the city. Until then, all he cared about was his motorbike. Maurizio might have gone on that trip based on a lie, but when he returned, he really did want to make wine. So much so, in fact, that he went directly to see his father. Until then he always sought the help of his mother to persuade his father. This time, however, he was so fired up with his newfound passion that he went directly to his father and found him surprisingly receptive. As Annamaria would later confirm, “For the very first time, Maurizio’s father saw a passion in his eyes. That was why he encouraged him.”
Rebel with a cause Excitedly, he told his father of his plan to expand the vineyards, build a cellar, and make a sparkling wine that would become an iconic brand like the most famous Champagnes. The rebel had found a cause. Albano immediately responded, “If that is your idea, then you should do it!” and when Maurizio asked how a 16-year-old could fund his dream, his father told him to use his accounting qualifications to draw up a business plan and go with his mother to ask the bank manager for a loan. This he did, and managed to secure a 160 million Lira mortgage (equivalent of $160,000 then, $1.8m today), little realizing that behind the scenes his father had already secured the loan. From that point on, despite underwriting the venture, Albano never interfered. He always let his son run Ca’del Bosco as he wanted and never let him feel as if he was not the entire driving force of the venture, which in every important way he was. (Maurizio had added the “o” to Bosc to transform it from what he perceived as the hard local dialect into a more elegant, classical Italian Bosco.) Maurizio ran Ca’del Bosco as he saw fit, however, I get the
feeling that he never felt out of his father’s shadow in life generally. Even as a grown man successfully running Ca’del Bosco, he still turned to his mother, such as when he wrote off a brand new Range Rover and conspired with his mother to buy an identical one so that his father would not notice! Yet the only time that Albano attempted to interfere in Ca’ del Bosco was when it had grown to 150 acres (60ha) and was steadily selling 500,000 bottles a year. Maurizio’s father pointed out that he could remain totally independent if he were willing to stay with these numbers and to forget about all the wild and wonderful R&D projects he was always dreaming up. If he wanted to pursue his dreams, however, he would have to find a partner to share the financial burden—or else he could go bust.
Left: Young Maurizio Zanella roaring around Ca'del Bosc on his motorbike. Right: One of the modern artworks commissioned by Maurizio Zanella.
142 | THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023
Artwork (right) Eroi di Luce by Igor Mitoraj
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