In conversation with Fabrizio Bastianelli, owner of La Bottega del Vino in Perugia

The health crisis caused by Covid-19 has brought about a marked increase in home deliveries and online sales, calling on many businesses to rethink their business model. Supermarkets, hypermarkets and shopping malls in particular, usually marked by considerable flows of customers, have had to put in place strict anti-contagion protocols.

A particularly significant phenomenon today concerns the so-called “neighbourhood shops”, which in many cases had seemed on the verge of extinction. In the food sector, the turnover of bakers, butchers, greengrocers and dairies has grown by as much as 50%. This trend, recorded in Italy by numerous specialist observers, has been explained in various ways: the safety guaranteed by a lower concentration of customers; a renewed attention to quality; the human relationship with the shopkeepers of the neighbourhood. During the lockdown, for example, many shopkeepers ensured home deliveries for the elderly and for people in difficulty.

Studi Umbri chose to explore this scenario, not only a commercial one, but a cultural and social one, by meeting one of these local traders, Fabrizio Bastianelli, owner of La Bottega del Vino. The business has two outlets in Perugia, at Ponte San Giovanni and on Via Settevalli. The centrality of the human factor, a culture of quality and respect for sustainability were the foundations on which, seven years ago, Bastianelli and his wife built this project devoted to wine and to other organic and biodynamic products, among them oil, pulses, honey, preserves and beers.

For this pair of entrepreneurs, running a wine shop means caring for the community and for the environment, strengthening the bond with the customer so as to express to the full the “artistic” quality of winemaking. Wine tells the story of the winemaker’s vision, the passion of a place, and it is the expression of the culture of a territory and of its history. The glass is not merely consumption, but sharing.

Fabrizio, what are the distinctive features of your products?

We have more than twenty kinds of loose wine. These are selected labels that are not to be found in large-scale retail and that come from the Marche, from the upper Tiber valley, from Sardinian wineries and from Umbria itself. The idea was to create a local shop that could serve as a point of reference for mindful, sustainable consumption.

What are your customers looking for?

The idea of the family cellar and the search for a product, loose wine, that represents a unicum in the sector and in Umbria. Our work is guided by the tenacious spirit of things well made, of products cared for down to the smallest detail and accompanied with attention through their various stages. As for the sale of loose wine, our outlets stand out above all for stocking the wines of a family-run winery in the Veneto, the Cantina Ca’ Baradei, whose philosophy is the cultivation and production of high-quality wines.

The figures on food-and-wine tourism confirm that today people no longer buy a product, but “an experience” that stays in the mind and can be recounted. Visiting the cellars, walking among the rows of vines, taking part in a harvest or a pruning have become “saleable” opportunities, more so than the product itself. The purchase of the product depends on the quality of this experience. The consumer comes to understand how the product “wine” comes into being, how it is worked and how it is aged.

La Bottega del Vino is the synthesis of this journey: it offers its patrons a splendid opportunity to be educated in taste and in a new approach towards the environment.

A few technical details?

Managing loose wines calls for close attention and constant care in maintaining the nitrogen level, as with the CO2 level of sparkling wines. Temperature control is essential in order to preserve the wine’s organoleptic qualities.

How much did the lockdown affect you?

Paradoxically, it went extremely well: sales increased and we recorded a weekly turnover of five thousand litres of wine. With the restrictions, many people preferred to stock up from us rather than at the big hypermarkets. Wine sales rose by 50%, and those of flour by as much as 70. Now, with the reopenings, we have returned to a certain standard which is, in any case, still growing.

In short, what is your added value?

Our model of eco-sustainable marketing. The pairing of care and wine can express in full the value of being together in a mindful way, the true engine of the economy in Italy and in the world.