“Without beer” he says “nothing of what we have created so far would be here. In a matter of a few years since our beginning, the world has radically changed. Craft brewing is now widespread. From pioneering this field we now have to prove competence, great professionalism, maturity, attention and consistency to stay in business. Crafting a good beer is not enough today to be successful. Many variables require attention, costumer services particularly”.

How are you actualizing this evolution? What will tomorrow’s Ducato Brewery look like?

The brewery’s 12 person team has unique and competent skill sets that cooperatively address all the bureaucratic challenges that arise daily in this business.

A new storage warehouse featuring a side building designed to host our offices was created to bring all the logistics back under our supervision. This is a significant investment that will allow managing all our customer services most effectively. A barcode and a custom software system will automatically manage our orders and their status while tracking the finished product and our beer’s raw materials.

Talk about this new storage warehouse…

We are developing such a significant investment step by step. Unlike many warehouses located in the grey suburbia, this modern infrastructure is in the open countryside vouching for a strong connection to the land. With great attention put on its aesthetic impact, it is made out of steel, wood and insulated panels. It will feature an extremely large walk-in refrigerator to store the finished product and a room temperature area for raw materials. The ultimate goal is to move all the production here to optimize space and to lower costs. In the future this warehouse will allow for further evolutions I won’t unveil yet….….

How do you see the challenges that smaller craft microbreweries have to face to enter the market?

Our customer management is fairly complex. 95% of our production goes to HORECA (hotel, restaurant, catering) in small orders making it particularly hard to meet everyone’s demands. We rely on a diverse multi company sale representative network, some distributors and one of our collaborators deals exclusively with the province of Parma. I believe that efficient order processing and effective cost control are crucial for a business to be successful nowadays.

Let’s speak about communication: how are you promoting your brand in Italy and abroad during these challenging times?

Communication is crucial as it creates a direct conversation with the consumer. Despite the few resources available, further strategies to develop customer loyalty are needed. Even our own brand items would work. In this regard I notice that the passion of the very beginning hasn’t vanished, it has matured and grown in its structure as a natural unfolding occurs.

Last question: which is your favorite Ducato beer and why?

I deeply appreciate this question because the pulsing heart of our business is often forgotten due to the intrinsic nature of my role and responsibilities ….which beer do I drink and love? We are the brewery’s greatest costumers and, if work allows it, we usually enjoy a good daily beer!! I am loyal to A.F.O., one of my favorites from the beginning, (Viaemilia of course, no need to mention it) which sometimes I pair with an IPA (or Victoria IPA when available) or a Wedding Rauch during meals. I love to end dinner with a Verdi Black Jack (currently out of stock). Lately I have switched to 24 month L’Ultima Luna, a real treat for special occasions!

Manuel

Its 6% ABV superbly hide behind a young freshness, spiciness and moderate sour taste. The yeast’s unmistakable character, typical of a Saison, is dry with a hint of spicy hotness and a subtle yet unique acidity. Its distinctive Brettanomyces induced sourness remains shy to the nose while exploding in the mouth.

Neither snobby nor rude, neither submissive nor subservient, this beer’s character is unique. Balance, elegance and Brettanomyces’s rustic simplicity coexist beautifully. The yeast keeps refining with time making the beer more complex and round year after year.

It has been almost a year since the day we bottled Vieille Ville Saison’s first batch. I remember it being an extremely intense, hot and laborious day. Wanting to finish all the beer in the tank, we worked all day nonstop from early in the morning till late at night. It was the first time we ever bottled a re- fermented beer at our facility in Fiorenzuola and we had to hurry to prevent the newly added sugars from triggering a re-fermentation before bottling. We hired two very special helpers for that “mission”: Manuel and Michele. Our two “accountants” proved themselves men of great endurance and patience. 2400 numbered bottles of 25 fluid oz resulted from that long, hot and humid day.

This beer started as a bet, a daring one… During adolescence, when I used to spend my afternoons in pubs with friends, Orval was one of the beers that struck me the most. Unique to its kind, it stands out for its freshness, dryness and simplicity. Complex aromas of leather, cellar, salami skin, cheese ends and rust make its character mysterious. Bottle aging enhances further its complexity by making it more and more charming. Added before bottling, Brettanomyces wild yeast is the secret behind this marvelous beer. Knowing about this practice through Orval, I took up the challenge of making my own. I decided to brew a standard Saison by using a very simple recipe (Pilsner malt, Poperinge hops and Belgian yeast).Then I re-fermented it by adding a single strain of Brettanomyces before bottling.

Months of aging made this beer’s end result go way beyond my greatest expectations. At Villaggio della Birra Festival or at Boreft Beer Festival (September 2012) although still young, it was already incredible for its freshness, multi-faceted flavors and balance. Drinking it after seven months of bottle fermentation was a multi-sensory experience. Brettanomyces conveyed it greater dryness, complexity and elegance. Just like a butterfly emerges from its chrysalis so this beer undergoes a transmutation that with time makes it a completely new beer.

“Thus no visible thing perishes completely as Nature recreates from one thing to the next and never lets one be born without another dying” as the lustrous Latin poet Lucretius writes in his De Rerum Natura. This is the only quote showing on the label because nothing else needs to be said or explained. We only ought to take it in and reflect. We can’t always understand everything as truth cannot be grasped. The modern western man is obsessed in his rational attempt to possess truth and to enclose the entire universe within categories. In my opinion, neither the unknown can be grasped nor can beauty be captured. Beauty, that part of the unknown alive within us all, can only be perceived during rare moments of ecstasy. If you are sensitive enough, if you listen deeply and open your mind then you may be fortunate enough to “touch” beauty and beers like this one will reveal themselves to you as you would have never expected before.

Drink it right away or, if you can master the patience, keep it for the future to accompany your happiest moments on a beautiful sunny day.

Giovanni

Giovanni

Every year I travel to Tettnang, a small village close to Lake Constance in the Baden Wurttemberg region in Southern Germany. My dear friends Marie, Ludwig, Anton and their parents live here. Following his father Frank’s footsteps, Ludwig kept his family’s 200 year old hop growing tradition alive. Hop cultivation is the village main agricultural activity. Wondering in the neighboring countryside, the proximity to Tettnang is anticipated by the appearance of hop rows reaching tall towards the sky. Hop’s bright green vines climb up to six feet high and get loaded with bright light green cones during the blooming season. Working intensively from dawn to dusk, farmers are rewarded their hard labor with wonderfully scented resinous hop cones. Delaying or hurrying the harvest of even one day sometimes can compromise the plant’s terroir and expressive potential. Despite the farmers knowing their trade and being aware of this, every year unfolds differently just like anything else in nature.
This year I arrived to Tettnang bringing the rain with me. Being always welcomed as a family member makes up for the long and boring journey. In the morning Ludwig and Marie set a table for blind tasting Tettnanger hop harvested during 6 different days. We separately write down our impressions to compare them later. Whichever lot is collectively agreed as the best one and satisfies the distinctive aromatic Tettnang qualities I look for gets loaded on my car and transported all the way to my brewery in Roncole. Fully inebriated by the intense hop scent filling the car, I drive through Austria, the Alps and the Padana plane covering over 600 km. Once at the brewery, hop is meticulously vacuum packed to better preserve its subtle, delicate and fragile aromas. This hop is purposely used for VIAEMILIA’s dry hopping only. VIAEMILIA, almost a classic in its category being the most awarded Kellerpils in the world, gains such elegance and freshness from the Tettnanger hops. Unusually intense and floral, the VIAEMILIA currently available is at its best expression. Its freshly harvested hops deliver nuances of white flowers, pollen, white pepper and yellow paste fruit. A refined bouquet surrounded by malt and yeast aromas. Unusually spicy and herbaceous in the rear of the nose, it finishes with a slightly rougher bitterness. The cyclical return of Nature unfolds all its freshness when newly harvested and states resolutely: “I was, I am, I will be”.