Lorenzo Corino

Let me present myself:

I was born two months after the grape harvest of 1947, remembered as an excellent year for Barbera. I was steered onto my life’s path by some excellent advisers, whom I learnt to listen to with innumerable benefits. I worked willfully and a little too obstinately, refusing shortcuts and compromises, and for this, I suffered, but it also did me good. I explored and lived the world of public research at home and abroad, and I am glad to have found my life’s calling. I tried to express gratitude towards my ancestors through working in the family business – a much needed rest and source of many emotions. But the sense of adventure and curiosity have never left me and after leaving the world of viticulture and enology research, I immediately joined a biodynamic project in the Tuscan Maremma called La Maliosa. I detest arrogance and deception. I adore discovering new places and people I can trust.

My professional life:

After graduating from Agricultural Science in 1972, I immediately began working as a researcher at Rome’s Istituto Sperimentale per la Cerealicoltura. I accepted a CNR scholarship at the Plant Breeding Institute of Cambridge (UK) and worked on a research project on the genetic resistance of cereals. Upon returning to Italy, I became an experimenter at the Istituto Sperimentale per la Cerealicoltura and then at the Istituto Sperimentale per la Viticoltura di Conegliano Veneto, with its seat in Asti, from which I became a director in 1989. From May 2008 to October 2009, I acted as director at the Unità di Ricerca per l’Uva da Tavola e la Vitivinicoltura in ambiente Mediterraneo (in Bari). From December 2009, I was Executive Director at the Asti “Centro di Ricerca per l’Enologia”, up until the end of 2012.
I have conducted research in numerous areas from the management of viticultural and plant soil, vegetative-reproductive balance, climate trends and the behaviour of grape varieties and rootstocks in relation to the environment to the biological system of the vineyard as a whole. I’ve been research manager on numerous projects and a coordinator on the Labter project on sustainable viticulture in the Cinque Terre National Park. I am a member of I.O.B.C (International Organisation for Biological and Integrated Control), S.I.G.A (Società Italiana Genetica Agraria) and an academic at the Accademia Italiana della Vite e del Vino. I have undertaken numerous technical and study trips to France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Spain, Portugal, Chile, South Africa, the UK and the USA. I am the author and co-author of more than 90 technical and scientific publications on viticulture. I have collaborated many times with Italian and foreign institutions, regional administrations, consortiums, producer organisations and private and sector companies. My expertise is in farming production that is more in harmony with the rural world and with particular attention to management through organic methods. I fundamentally maintain that we must rethink the way viticulture and enology are performed in Italy and I support the need for greater respect for environmental and ethical values. Among these, there definitely needs to be a commitment to the better use of renewable energy resources. My opinion is tied to the fundamental value of soil capital and the surrounding environment, and its optimal use to increase the health properties of its fruits. I represent the sixth generation of winemakers in Costigliole d’Asti. I began running the viticulture project at Fattoria La Maliosa in January 2013.