These days there is a lot of talk about the Netflix series "Sanpa", dedicated to the founder of San Patrignano Vincenzo Muccioli. Do you know what today is one of the main activities of the first (and most famous) rehabilitation community for drug addicts? The production of wine. We talk about it here
2021 began in memory of San Patrignano, at least on television. For days, in fact, on social media we have talked about nothing but Sanpa – Lights and darkness of San Patrignano, a documentary television series available on Netflix and chronicling the epic of Vincenzo Muccioli, founder of the first community for the recovery of drug addicts. It was the year 1978 and the heroin drama, in Italy and around the world, overwhelmed more than one generation.
With archive images and a series of testimonies directed to those who lived the experience of San Patrignano up close, the docu-series traces the genesis of the community and its most controversial events, including judicial ones, until 1995, the year of the death of the famous founder. The recovery community, however, has continued its history and today it is still very active, albeit with methods and approaches different from those that are relived on the screen in these days.
One of the main activities to which San Patrignano was voted – and which justifies the fact that we are also talking about it here, on the de The Italian kitchen – and the wine production: in the series there is only a "taste" of it, but over time this has become a predominant activity, which, like all products marketed by San Patrignano, still contributes to the self-sufficiency of the community, which, since 1978, it hosts free of charge boys and girls in need of help.
We find ourselves, we remember, in the hills of Rimini, at an altitude of about 200 meters in the municipality of Coriano: not far from the Adriatic, therefore, but also a few kilometers from Mount Titano, where the Republic of San Marino stands. A fortunate geographical location and with a special microclimate, where the temperature changes given by the sea and the mountain enhance the organoleptic characteristics of the grapes and the breeze from the sea mitigates the high summer temperatures, giving the wine a marked mineral note.
At first they were alone Sangiovese and Trebbiano. The harvest was done by hand and the pressing with the feet, a press and five wooden barrels. In the mid-90s there was a turning point: the wine acquired body and value and new vineyards were planted with merlot grapes, cabernet sauvignon is cabernet franc. It reached 6,600 plants per hectare.
The Sangiovese, meanwhile, gained an identity all its own: softer, with sweeter tannins, and became in fact the Sangiovese from San Patrignano.
Today white, red and sparkling wines produced by the community are exported all over the world, from Quebec to Finland, from South Africa to Australia.
Grapes and wine will certainly play their part, but it is above all the children of San Patrignano who make all this special, because they are the ones who follow the entire production process, from the vineyards to bottling, with passion and dedication.
«Wine, explains the community, «becomes a means through which to express the desire to do and give one's best, to create something truly exceptional and unique. In short, a glass that gives joy to those who drink it as much, and perhaps more, to those who produce it.
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