To reach Paradiso di Frassina, a sun-drenched farmhouse in the green hills near Montalcino, you follow a winding dirt road through twenty-four acres of lush wine country. Fields of sunflowers and grapes roll out on all sides and the strains of Spanish guitar fill the air—soft at first, then deep and powerful as you approach the house. You can’t help but think that this might indeed be paradise.
It’s surprising, then, to discover that the music comes from fifteen large speakers scattered throughout the vineyards—placed high in the trees, propped up on poles near the vines and camouflaged close to the ground in small steel shelters.
The man behind the melody is sixty-three-year-old Carlo Cignozzi, a former Milanese lawyer who turned his passion for music into a farming phenomenon—and three delicious red wines.
Cignozzi purchased his first estate in Tuscany in the early 1970s as an investment, when the Italian government officially declared the area economically depressed. Thanks to the Under the Tuscan Sun tourism boom in the 1990s, he sold the villa at a deep profit, and, after thirty-five years as a lawyer, realized he didn't have to work anymore. Instead of pursuing his scuba-diving hobby on a remote island, however, Cignozzi opted for a challenge. He and his wife Diana, a photographer, bought a sprawling stone farmhouse, named it "Paradiso di Frassina," and spent nearly two years transforming it into a working vineyard.
During the first harvest, Cignozzi began serenading the grape-pickers with his accordion. "I've always believed in the power of music," says the trim, deeply tanned man who likes wearing a uniform of jeans, dark blue polo shirt and tan sneakers. "As a boy I played the piano, and as a young man I performed musical skits in local theaters. Now I want to go down in history as the man who whispered Mozart to grapevines."
He delivers this last sentence with a wink and a quick smile, but the scope of his project is no jest. "I started putting music in the wine cellars in 2001," Cignozzi says. "It was just for me; I wasn't used to so much quiet! Then I came across research on the Internet about the positive effects of music on plants, and I decided to play more music outside, too." Not one to do things halfway, he consulted a Swiss engineer who recommended D.A.S. speakers to withstand the elements. Now Cignozzi plays primarily Mozart, Haydn, Handel, Mahler and Vivaldi over his vineyards.
The sweet melodies keep wild boars, birds, deer and bugs away from the vines, he insists, drastically reducing the need for pesticides. Grapes grown to a classical tune also seem to mature faster—in ten or fourteen days instead of twenty—giving them a higher alcohol content.
Not everyone believes him. "The local winemakers think he's crazy and that his music is a just a marketing scheme," says his wife Diana. In Tuscany, a place where farmers have been using the same wine-making methods for centuries, change comes very slowly—especially from "big city" outsiders. The couple has invited 240 members of the Brunello Wine Consortium—of which Cignozzi is a member—out to their property to see the results. So far, only two have visited. Both were politely interested but adopted a wait-and-see attitude, says Diana.
The science community, on the other hand, takes Cignozzi's work seriously. Researchers from the University of Florence launched an official study last year, and expect concrete results by late 2006, around the time the harvest is put in enormous wooden casks in the Paradiso cantina to age.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the results are what Cignozzi claims," says Professor Stefano Mancuso, a specialist in agrarian pathologies and chief researcher on the project. "There have been many studies, dating back to the 1970s, about the positive effect of music on plants. Now we're going to verify if the same is true for vines."
Even a layman's glance at the two large tubs of vines at Paradiso, measured once a week by a doctoral student from Florence who is devoting his thesis to the project, seems to bear out the theory. The plants bathed by notes of Vivaldi's "Spring" appear significantly larger and healthier than those just ten feet away, growing in silence.
"Of course, we have to wait for the final results to be sure of the effects," Mancuso says. "But I have a feeling that they might warrant a toast—perhaps with a nice bottle of Montalcino."
In the meantime, Cignozzi is already busy with another wine-related project, this one more readily accepted by his fellow winemakers. A play Cignozzi wrote—La Commedia di Vino (The Di-wine Comedy)—will be performed next year in Tuscany and Milan to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Brunello Wine Consortium. Written in commedia dell'arte style, the production's stars are different Italian grapes. Cignozzi is happy to re-live his old stage days as he works on the casting.
"The play takes a lot of energy," he says, tapping a pipe. "But, then again, I think I've got enough."
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