A wine is not just a bottle to be opened, it is also a piece of history, the history of a region and of its traditions in wine growing and production: the history of a process of transformation that accompanies the passing of the seasons. For Ca' di Rajo the 2017 grape harvest represents the birth of a new project, which is inextricably tied up in history with a capital "H".
The three young Cecchetto brothers (the eldest, Simone, is 33) decided to give life to ICONEMA, a Piave DOC Tai limited edition that brings with it approximately 100 years of history: it is a Tai wine made using grapes from a vineyard, grown according to Bellussera vine cultivation, which dates back to the beginning of the 20th century. It is a vineyard owned by the Paladin family from San Polo di Piave that the wine cellar has “adopted” in support of its preservation.
Indeed, the roots of this project have been burying deep for approximately one century. They have been doing so in half a hectare of Bellussera vineyards, a method of vine cultivation based on a formidable architecture of iron wires, developed at the end of the 19th century and capable of characterising the architecture of the wine-growing landscape of Sinistra Piave for decades.
“We are proud of this project,” explains Simone Cecchetto, the young owner of the company, together with his brothers Fabio and Alessio. “This is a new step in our battle to preserve the Piave region’s wine-making heritage, a heritage that also represents culture and identity. In this way, we are also cementing our desire to preserve the Bellussera vineyards, as we are already doing with Raboso, Glera and rare local grape varieties such as Marzemina Bianca and Manzoni Rosa."
From the 2017 vintage, 3133 collector's bottles and 100 magnums, numbered one by one, have been produced. All picked by hand, the grapes were laid out to dry on racks for 25 days to enhance the complexity, personality and elegance of the new wine. This Tai wine signed by Ca' di Rajo aims to pay homage to the Treviso and Piave DOC specialities: "It will be the only Tai made from Bellussera cultivations that are almost 100 years old: a unique wine with numbered bottles that are collectible items."
Iconema is also art
Iconema represents “a territory's historical memory”. This project is an intuition of the Cecchetto family. It came as a result of a study on Bellussera cultivation carried out by Diego Tomasi, researcher at CREA-VE, Conegliano Viticulture and Enology Research Centre, Gianni Moriani, coordinator of the Master's in Food and Wine Philosophy at Milan's San Raffaele University, and Attilio Scienza, professor of viticulture at the University of Milan (La Bellussera, Antiga Edizioni, 2017).
Ca' di Rajo wanted to pay tribute to this example of landscape architecture with a project that involved approximately 20 artists who painted 100 prestigious wooden cases, artistic chests that contain as many Iconema magnums from number 1 to number 100.
Product sheet: http://localhost:8080/cadirajo/en/iconema-tai-doc-piave
