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The wine-growing estate called Il Paradiso di Frassina dates from 2000 when it was founded by Giancarlo Cignozzi, a lawyer from Milan with 35 years’ experience. Giancarlo had been a frequent visitor to the Montalcino region since 1972, having founded from scratch Tenuta Caparzo, considered today as among the most renowned wineries in Montalcino, and having helped inspire the creation of other leading wineries like Altesino and Gianfranco Soldera’s Case Basse. During this time Giancarlo befriended and supported the great wine writer Luigi Veronelli, whilst also supporting Montalcino’s smaller producers and the concept of cru or terroir-driven, non-interventionist wines. In addition, Giancarlo also played a leading role advising the Consorzio di Brunello (the Brunello wine producers’ consortium). Whilst Brunello started to grow, almost unknown to the world, Giancarlo was an active figurehead for the smaller producers who opposed the new, larger and more industrial-oriented wineries which soon began arriving in the Brunello zone. Together with other purists in Montalcino, in the last few years Giancarlo had led the fight to defend the notion that Montalcino’s red wines (Brunello di Montalcino and Rosso di Montalcino) should only ever be made 100% from the Sangiovese Grosso (or ‘Brunello’) grape variety, and not blended with other non-traditional (foreign) grapes.

In 1999, Giancarlo sold his majority shareholding in the Caparzo winery which he felt was becoming too big and no longer fitted with his own philosophy; so Giancarlo looked for and found in Il Paradiso di Frassina an estate whose much smaller dimensions were suggestive of the kind of hand-made fantasy vineyard he had always wanted. It would take Giancarlo around two years to restore this old farmstead, whose origins date back to around 1,000AD but which had been abandoned over 50 years; but in the end his dream did become true. In this fabulous place, overlooking a never-ending panorama of pristine, gently rolling hills, a crazy idea was born, that of playing music to the vines. The struggle to achieve this was both a joy and a challenge for Giancarlo, and is told in his book L’uomo che sussurra alle vigne [The Vine Whisperer], published in 2010 by Rizzoli. The book recounts the existential, emotional and scientific journey, from the moment Giancarlo had this flash of intuition to the time when he first treated the vineyard using music therapy. This work subsequently became the subject of a research project led by the Universities of Pisa and Florence. The Vine Whisperer is not only an account of the music therapy experiments but is also the story of the joy and difficulty of living life in an unconventional way, far from the hurly burly of the big city.

Between 2000 and 2001 four hectares (10 acres) of ‘Sangiovese di Brunello’ were planted at Paradiso di Frassina, and these infant vines nurtured by being cuddled with classical and baroque music diffused by acoustic speakers. So as to give a single, geometric, and subtle textural tone to the musical harmonies, from 2008 onwards the University researchers suggested that only the music of Mozart should be played, providing a single and unique musical blanket to the vines. Since 2002 experiments were conducted at Paradiso di Frassina on how the frequency of the sounds were affecting the vines (Vitis vinifera), with one team under Prof Stefano Mancuso from the University of Florence examining biophysical changes in the vines (how they were growing), and another team led by Prof Andrea Lucchi from the University of Florence looking at vineyard entomology (insect life). In 2006 an American company, Bose, whose curiosity had been aroused by this scientific research, supplied free of charge a special all-weather speaker system for the vineyard thanks to the personal intervention of the company’s founder, Professor Amar Bose.

The conclusions of this research will finally be published in early 2013, and will appear in international journals whose scientific focus is the biological and natural world, testament to the seriousness of these experiments. The interest this has generated has led to other wine-gowers in both Italy and elsewhere emulating this research. It is hoped that after this research is published and becomes known internationally, and a working protocol for it can be devised, it will mean many wine-growers will welcome music therapy and understand that it opens the door to much cleaner and even zero-input farming methods, without chemicals or genetic modification. “If it is true that musical harmonies can open an as yet undiscovered aspect of farming, more research would then be needed into all sound waves, not just infra- and ultra- ones, to be able to conclude both in the laboratory and in the field how plant life is affected by sound.” Prof Stefano Mancuso

The size and thickness of the leaf increases, as does its level of chlorophyll. Use of copper and sulfur spray treatments can be reduced by 50% without risking vine health Leaves can respire (breathe in) and expire (breathe out) more efficiently which makes them more resistant to stress (dryness, rain, wind) The grapes have higher levels of anthocyanins and polyphenols (colour and tannins) The vines’ biological growth cycle is more efficient, meaning grapes can be harvested upto 15 days earlier than usual, and thus under far better weather conditions.

Results from plants exposed to soundResults from plants exposed to soundResults from plants exposed to soundResults from plants exposed to sound::::

These innovative experiments and the results they produced created something of a media frenzy. From 2005 onwards the press and TV provided continuous reports on the “musical vineyards”. The articles published in the written media, and reports shown on television, are listed on the English language part of the Il Paradiso di Frassina website (www.alparadisodifrassina.it): please search under “Reviews”. One item of particular note is the recognition the musical experiments have had from the United Nations. In June 2011, the UN-Habitat office cited Giancarlo Cignozzi and Prof. Stefano Mancuso’s research into music therapy among the one-hundred leading projects worldwide into sustainability. The UN even defined this research for the first time as ‘phonobiology’. It appeared in a UN publication entitled “The Bright Green Book”, a copy of which was presented to Giancarlo Cignozzi at a special event held in Rio di Janeiro which was attended by Brazil’s leading biodiversity experts, and UN and Italian officials, including Italy’s ambassador to Brazil.

Giancarlo continues to run Paradiso di Frassina with the kind of profound respect for nature typical of the old-fashioned farmers whose “peasant wisdom” allowed them to work in perfect harmony with the land, echoing Luigi Veronelli’s vision of a mythical way of wine-growing, in which man and nature were inextricably and nobly linked. The exclusion of any form of chemical product is the watchword at Paradiso di Frassina where biodynamic practices – allowing native grasses and flowers to flourish, the sowing of cover crops (“green manures”), spraying plant teas to stop vines from heat stressing – meld with good basic wine-growing practices, like pruning the vines to produce smaller yields but of higher quality grapes. Paradiso is where a virtuous and holistic farming circle exists, where peasant farming, a happy lifestyle for vines, a respect for nature and the emotion of music conjoin.

The Brunello di Montalcino and the ‘Gea’ Rosso di Montalcino red wines come from Sangiovese vines protected by Mozart’s harmonies, and are then aged in large wooden vats before maturing bottle, also to the comforting sounds of music. From autumn 2013 a Limited Edition Brunello called “The Magic Flute” will take shape, from Sangiovese vines at Il Paradiso most refined by the sound of Mozart’s hormonies, thanks to the presence there of fifty ‘Bose’ speakers. Giancarlo, in his mischievous and slightly provocative way, decided to challenge the fashion for Super-Tuscan red wines by planting a vineyard between Mount Amiata and the Mediterranean coast, and in a very innovative way by planting it with 12 different grape varieties: 6 from Bordeaux and 6 from Tuscany. The isolation and distance of this vineyard meant the music therapy experiments could not be replicated here as they were at Il Paradiso’s vineyard next to its winery, and instead the idea was to make a wine from as many different grape varieties (12) as one would find in a scale of Bach semi-tones, or, as the Anglo-Saxons would call it, “a crazy blend.”

During the many wine tastings offered to those who come to visit Il Paradiso di Frassina’s Mozart-enhanced vines, almost as a kind of pilgrimage, Giancarlo describes the complexity of his ‘12 Uve’ [12 grape variety] blend as if each grape variety (or baby vine cutting) were a personality, like a character wearing a mask in comedic theatre. In this way the Cabernet Sauvignon grape is transformed into an arrogant and merciless Duke who, aided by dignitaries and courtesans (the Marquis Merlot, Madame Syrah [Shiraz], and General Petit Verdot), serves to amplify the power of the Sacred Emperor of Bordeaux, allowing his French influence to be sprinkled across the wine world, weakening the poorer, indigenous locals by subjecting their vineyards to a war of “deeper coloured” wines. On the back of this rather fantastical idea a play called the “De Vine Comedy” was performed in Montalcino in April 2007 as the Brunello region celebrated 40 years of having its own wine producers’ consortium (Consorzio). The author of this “De Vine Comedy” intended it as a critique of those wine-growers throughout Italy who had been tempted to de-nature their wines by Bordeauxifying them, and who thought that to curry favour with certain international, rather misguided opinion-formers in the wine media it was necessary simply to make Italian wine more French, with a little help from winery technicians and their particularly dishonest and ill-advised brand of alchemy.