Spotlight: Julieta Escobar from San Martin Winery!
Julieta and Alberto met in 2014 on the second day of her move to Italy at an Argentinian restaurant in Italy where he was the cook and she was the waitress. In her words, “we really jumped at the chance of a vineyard for rent and a free life. Our idea is always to enhance and promote the territory that has adopted us through the idea of slow viticulture.”
The name of their winery, San Martin, represents the union of two worlds: Europe and South America. In Piemonte, Alberto’s Italian region of origin, the day of San Martino is the farm rentals due date; farmland leasing is how they got started. In addition, Julieta and Alberto use a quote by Josè de San Martin, the general who freed Argentina - Julieta’s home country - from Spanish domination as their motto:
“Serás lo que debas ser, o no serás nada” means “you will be what you must be, or else you will be nothing.”
We asked Julieta what drew her and Alberto to winemaking, and she gave us this beautiful explanation:
“For us, producing wine boils down to creating the wines that we like first, having fun making them and representing our morainic terroir as faithfully as possible.”
That terroir she’s referring to is the soil with glacial origin, which gives the grapes and resulting wines freshness and minerality.
In addition to working their 6 acres of vineyards, Alberto and Julieta stay busy renovating their farmhouse in Moncrivello, where they make the wine and share it with anyone who comes to visit them. They make about 12,000 bottles a year - which is tiny! - using only grapes native to their region, Canavese.
We challenged Julieta to describe her winemaking philosophy in three words, and she gave us “experimental, territorial, and slow.” Come meet her and discover how this mindset becomes wine!
Julieta visits Grand Cata this Friday from 5 to 8pm for DailyCata w/ Friends. All the wines she pours will be 10% off, and she’ll be joined by Marco Doria, one half of the brother-sister importing team Doria Wines.
