Reviewing the winery “I Favati” and thrilling ourselves with the wines of this little pearl of Irpina, we found many similarities between the life experience of the Favati-Petrozziello family and that of Russell Crowe in “A Good Year”, the 2006 film by Ridley Scott.
After the brief period in which we illustrated our project-pairing between wine and music, Ritmo diVino returns to the artistic “pairing” with the excellence of the Campania region.
This time we went in Cesinali, in the province of Avellino, at the estate “I Favati”, a winery run by the Favati-Petrozziello families, producers of some of the most important DOCG and DOC wines of our land.
The artistic combination we chose for this winery, at a first glance, might seem banale, given that “A Good Year”, Ridley Scott’s 2006 film with Russell Crowe is one of the most important films about wine.
Every wine lover probably saw this film, along with Mondovino, with Hubert de Montille, and in Sideways: traveling with Jack. And, in fact, while in the editorial office we were comparing ourselves on which combination we should choose for Favati, the idea of choosing “An excellent vintage” for such a large cellar seemed to us a rather simplistic choice.
Really, the story of the Petrozziello-Favati family is very similar to the story of Max Skinner, the protagonist of the film, played great by the Australian actor Russell Crowe.
Skinner is in fact a businessman, a broker, one who lives in an environment made of securities, shares and money that circulates day after day without a goal, passing from hand to hand.
Like Max Skinner, Mrs. Rosanna Petrozziello, who runs the company I Favati with her husband and her big family, comes, by her own admission, from the business world: she was a bank employee, and the world of wine, up to twenty years ago, she was completely foreign to her.
The passion of her husband and her family for the nectar of Bacchus, however, infected her very soon, and here is that Mrs. Petrozziello turned from a bank employee, in one of the most influential women in the world of Campania wine.
Her work and that of those who love her, today, has transformed her family’s vineyards in a real Irpinia excellence, just like Russell Crowe in the film.
The broker, a man “realized”, hard and cold as this befits those who live in a world where mistakes are not allowed, where everything revolves around percentages and statistics, soon changes into a successful businessman in a world he did not know at all, and his Château de Sirocque, inherited from his missing uncle, becomes a pearl of Burgundy.
Secondly, what changes man is passion, and in fact, in difficult times like ours, in which a steady job seems to be the point of arrival, the choice of Mrs. Petrozziello is a gesture of love towards nature and towards his land.
Not everyone leaves a job in the bank for the land, and the same Russell Crowe, initially, was aiming to sell the estate. The love for the beautiful Marion Cotillard and for the Pinot Noir, however, changes it altogether, and brings it back to childhood spent in France in the vineyards, before the disappearance of his parents in an accident.
If we were to put it in very simple terms, the Favati estate won for this great courage of a woman and for the foresight of her family.
A triumph that can only enhance the Campania region!
