Va Piano: Homegrown Winemaker Tends to His Roots

Roots are important in winemaking. The soil in which they are planted,
the care with which they are tended—it can all be tasted in the wine. Roots are equally important in our lives. They link our future to our past, connecting us to the people and places that have shaped us. At Va Piano Vineyards, a complex root structure binds Walla Walla with Italy, art with charity, and wine with memories.

By Ryan Schreck • Photos by David Frame

Winemaker Justin Wylie is a fourth-generation Walla Wallan. Like most natives of the city, he spent some years away. But when he felt it was time to settle down, he returned to Walla Walla to build a home and start a family. Roots are important to Wylie.

In 2000, Wylie planted ten acres of grape vines around the future site of a Tuscan-style villa and winery. But he didn't rush right in to the wine business. He wanted to take his time, hone his craft. He wanted to focus on quality. He wanted to give his vines time to mature. The roots of those values stretch far beyond Walla Walla and back to Florence, Italy.

As a senior in college, Wylie studied in Florence through Gonzaga University's long-running studies abroad program. The focus of Gonzaga-in-Florence is heavily weighted toward experiential learning; four-day school weeks facilitate nearly constant travel. It is typically a fast-paced, whirlwind of a year, a kaleidoscope of new experiences. But Wylie detected a calm beneath the nonstop onslaught of foreign foods and trains and languages. He noticed that for the Italians, time was crawling by.

"I was really inspired by the culture of Italy," Wylie says. "I respected the people and how they treated their lifestyle. Everything was slower. It was about quality. It was about quality time with your family, quality time for yourself, for your business. It frustrated me at first, how slow everything was. But after a while I thought, ‘They've got it figured out.'"

The Italians have a phrase that applies to their laid-back, siesta-loving culture: Va piano, va sano e va lotano. In English it means, "He who goes slowly, goes safely and goes far." You might recognize the first words in the name of Wylie's winery. He wears his roots on his sleeve.

BRUNO'S BLEND OF ART AND WINE

When Wylie returned to Walla Walla, he brought back more than an appreciation of Italian culture. He also brought Fr. Bruno Segatta.

A native Italian and peripatetic wanderer, Fr. Bruno has lived a life of motion. For 20 years he was the art instructor and assistant to the dean of students for Gonzaga-in-Florence. One of his chief duties was leading student tours through Italy, greater Europe and the Middle East, down to equatorial Africa and up to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. His free time is often spent racing around the U.S. to preside over baptisms and wedding vows for the people who traveled the world with him before settling down. Fr. Bruno was never one to settle down and put down roots himself, but he has found a home base at Va Piano Vineyards.

When he passes through town, Fr. Bruno turns the Va Piano villa into a makeshift art studio. Adapting to his environment, he has supplemented his usual Italian themes with images from the vineyard and surrounding hillside. His paintings are sold at the winery, and the best are featured on bottles of one of Va Piano's most popular wines, Bruno's Blend.
"Anytime he nails one, it goes on the label," Wylie says. Just bottled in July, the label of Bruno's Blend IV—a blend of Syrah, Malbec and Merlot—features an impressionistic view of the Duomo and Florence's famous red rooftops.

THE GRAPES OF CHARITY

The connection between Fr. Bruno and Va Piano is about more than just art. Wylie traces the roots of his winery back to the year he spent in Florence with Fr. Bruno and the profound effect their friendship had on him.

"Bruno inspired me," he says. "He's a very important part of the reason why we started the winery."

Part of what makes Fr. Bruno inspiring is his sense of charity. Giving seems to come as naturally to him as eating or breathing or painting. He will offer whatever he has to whoever needs it, as if by instinct. In recent years, he has taken his charity global. Through Bruno Art for Kids, he has donated money to children's organizations around the world, namely the Niambani House for Kids, an orphanage for AIDS-infected children in Nairobi, Kenya.

Together, Wylie and Fr. Bruno have been able to continue and intensify that philanthropy. A portion of the proceeds from each bottle of Bruno's Blend is given to a charity for children. The recipient rotates from year to year, with this year's contributions going to the Seattle Children's Hospital.

"I wanted to be in a position where I could give back early on," Wylie says. "Many people wait until they're very successful before they give, but there was no reason why we couldn't start giving early. With Bruno's Blend, we've been able to donate a lot of money every year, money that Bruno would have donated out of his own pocket."

Wylie also mixes wine with charity to strengthen the roots connecting him to Gonzaga University. He partnered with his alma mater to produce the 2005 Aloysius Cabernet Sauvignon. Gonzaga markets this high-end wine—named for Aloysius Gonzaga, the patron saint of children—to its alumni, and Wylie donates six dollars from every bottle sold to the Gonzaga scholarship fund.

THE TUSCAN HILLS OF WASHINGTON

The Italian influence on Va Piano Vineyards is apparent from the moment you set foot on the property. All that can be seen from the gates is rows and rows of grapes. Visitors are fully immersed in fields of unbottled fruit before they catch a glimpse of the stuccoed villa. This is precisely Wylie's intention.

"I really wanted to focus on creating an estate vineyard," he says. "I wanted to have a place where people can come and get a really good feel of things—see the vineyards, feel the vineyards, taste the wine. I want people to feel like they got more than a glass or a bottle of wine. I want it to be an entire experience from the time you enter the gates to the time you leave."

This echoes Wylie's philosophy that wine transcends what's in the bottle. He credits wine with bringing friends together, and he relates the uncorking of a bottle to the unsealing of the memories that everybody brings with them to the table. Sharing a bottle of wine with friends or family becomes a sort of ceremony, a reunification through the remembrance of shared experiences and common roots.

Perhaps working with wine keeps all of those memories fresh, because Justin Wylie certainly never forgot the people, places and experiences that have influenced him. They form the roots of who he is. Those roots have matured, and their fruit surround him in his villa at Va Piano Vineyards.

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