A true icon of Italian starred haute cuisine, but also a prominent television personality and author of successful books, Carlo Cracco has recently become an "honorary citizen" of Romagna, since it is precisely here that Cracco has decided to start a new challenge that starts from the land, from products, from wine and above all from sustainability.
“Vistamare” is the estate of sixteen hectares, seven of which are vineyards, on the hills of Romagna, just above the village of Santarcangelo, where his new adventure as a producer began with his wife Rosa.
Maurizio Magni, journalist, sommelier and head of the Emilia Romagna guide to drink and eat, met Carlo Cracco at the Enzo and Dino Ferrari circuit in Imola on the occasion of the final stage of the "Vini ad Arte" review, organized every year by the Consorzio Vini di Romagna to celebrate the food and wine excellences of the territory.
Article originally published on EmiliaRomagnaVini.it
"You are there and you have the infinite in front of you ... Down, far away, a little blue strip, the sea. How can you say no?". So with a brushstroke of simplicity Carlo Cracco talks about the emotion he felt together with his wife Rosa Fanti in front of what would later become their estate, immediately renamed 'Vistamare.' Sixteen hectares, seven of which are vineyards, on the hills of Romagna, just above the village of Santarcangelo.
"It is a wonderful territory, we fell in love", continues Cracco who calls himself a 'citizen of the world' but immediately highlights the values of 'rediscovery'. “Often - he says - we are led to look only at the glamorous places and everything else is abandoned because it is not cool, it is not accessible. What I like, however, is trying to rediscover and enhance the smaller places, the ones we already know. We learned the rediscovery of known places, of simple things during the pandemic. And here the territory is wonderful ".
In Romagna Cracco has decided to start a new challenge that starts from the earth. From products, from wine, from sustainability. In a place that his wife Rosa knows well since she was born there on the hills of Santarcangelo.
"The fact of having opened a farm - explains the chef - even if in fact I am the least important part of the company, because it is Rosa who does everything, has allowed me to realize a dream, that of making wine. ".
Cracco, his choice of producing wine in Romagna and engaging in this enterprise with a renowned winemaker like D’Attoma certainly gives prestige to this territory ... What is your opinion on the Romagna of wine?
We have found the wine here. This wine, this vineyard. And it was one of the reasons that prompted us to buy the estate. I believe a lot in local wines like these from Romagna. There is a great demand for slightly different products. Not the usual grape varieties, the usual names. There is a huge margin for growth. Through these wines we can identify an original path and we are doing it with D’Attoma also because he was already working in Romagna. With him we can make the leap in quality. And above all, he shared our plan to focus on 'difference'. That is, to cultivate only native vines that have always been there.
In Vistamare we have old vines of this red flame Trebbiano which up to 30 years ago was widespread in Romagna, but it was not fashionable and no one drank it… So everyone has explanted it. We found it, we have almost two hectares of it, but we didn't know how to treat it. So we went here a stone's throw, in Roncofreddo, to Renato Brancaleoni, a great cheese refiner, who told us about that wine, the 'red flame' wine, the old Trebbiano of tradition and the potential of old vines. From there we started to develop both the Trebbiano Romagnolo project and the other indigenous ones.
Which vines have you decided to focus on and how do you produce them?
In the vineyards of the estate there is a bit of Rebola, a bit of Malvasia di Candia and Pagadebit. There is Albana, Sangiovese and even a little Cabernet because the old farmers loved to plant several vines to satisfy everyone ... And while waiting for the winery, which will be our next project, we leaned on San Patrignano for the reds (Colle Giove, ed), because we know each other with the Moratti family and have collaborated many times and D'Attoma also works with them, while for the whites we have chosen a small reality, the San Valentino winery, on the hills of Rimini.
Not just wine. Vistamare products are those that you then use in the recipes of your restaurants. How important is it for a chef to control the ingredients he uses in the kitchen, to know where they come from and how they are produced? And how important is the link with the territory?
It is the future of this country. Land is the most important thing we have. And we don't find out now. But the land is low so you have to bend down to exploit it and people find it hard to bend. Instead, bending over, working and listening to the earth is good for the mind and allows you to have control of the supply chain. For the restaurant it is a great added value. It allows you to make choices, to chase quality. It is I who produce and select. I used to buy a lot of tons of fruit and vegetable herbs… But if I grow them myself, in addition to creating a micro-economy, I also have total control and I can make choices. I don't need to change supplier. The future of catering but above all of the countryside is to be able to establish a continuous channel of communication between the restaurant and the farm, to create a short supply chain.
To cook I need oil and here in Vistamare there are 500 olive trees and the oil they produce is that of a suitable area. With fruit is the same, we found these six hectares where there are peaches, cherries, apricots, persimmons, apples, pears and plums. It immediately seemed like a problem, six hectares is a lot of stuff ... Then a little at a time we produced the juices, the jams and then the fresh fruit that we also use on the pastry.
This has to do with the fight against food waste and the sustainability of which you have always been a supporter ...
Certainly. We are trying not to waste anything. We use everything that is produced by the farm. We have created a vegetable garden of almost one hectare for the needs of the restaurants, there is an orchard, olive trees, a small lake and the animals will come ... we have also planted ancient seeds and inaugurated a permaculture project, that is a sustainable and self-powered environment with integrated pest management through plants. And this allows us in our new Estate to completely free ourselves from chemistry.
Cracco, has been back on TV for a few months with Dinner Club, a sui generis food travelogue, which talks about food and territory, but which gives ample space to conviviality, thanks also to the level of 'diners' such as Diego Abatantuono, Luciana Littizzetto, Valerio Mastandrea, Sabrina Ferilli, Pier Francesco Favino, Fabio De Luigi. are you satisfied with this new experience in some ways very different from Masterchef?
The theme is travel… Another way of talking about food and the rediscovery of territorial ties. We have tried to enhance the smaller areas, those far from the highways. In one of the first episodes we went to the Po. It is a magical place, full of great stories, such as that of the King of the Po, the hermit who lives in the abandoned town ... Fabio De Luigi who is originally from Romagna had never been there . This makes us understand how little we know our territory. I, who am from the Veneto, knew those places. And together we have rediscovered the magic of a territory that I never tire of repeating we have to look for here, under the house.
What do you think of Romagna about food? And what about hospitality? How much food and wine can be testimonials of our territory?
I think that Romagna has ample room for growth. In other regions we are already in excess, we no longer know what to do and what to find to communicate. Here in Romagna there are still some prairies to ride and the growth margin compared to other territories is much higher both in wine and in food. Here there is still the taste for discovery, for the search for an identity. All helped by a consolidated heritage that is the proverbial welcome on the coast, from which to discover the splendid hinterland and its products. There are the engines that make it famous in the world. And above all, there is a much more open and friendly lifestyle. Here it is really good to live!
Thanks again to the EmiliaRomagnaVini.it portal and the author Maurizio Magni for allowing us to share the article.