Last year while in Tuscany, we drove down to Montalcino for the weekend. After nearly missing the sloped driveway and happy avoiding a rollercoaster-style tour of the Tuscan hills, we arrived at Villa Cipressi – a tiny family vineyard in Castelnuovo dell’Abate.
The wines were complex but not overpowering, and the tour of the facilities introduced us to a history of the vineyard, the terroir, and their family. They took a genuine pride in the property, and we left after shipping a few bottles of wine and their honey – a highlight of the trip – back to New York.
Today, they sent their mailing list a note. It is the ONLY “marketing” email I cared enough to read during the pandemic, and it’s worth it to share.
Good morning,
How are you ? unfortunately, the situation with covid 19 has not yet ended.
For this reason and for the fact that for a long time we have not been able to meet each other, we have decided to send you a report once a month of what we do in the company with photos and more, in order to keep us closer, and let feel you to participate in our life into the farm.
Fortunately, we are all well, the work in the company continues even if on a commercial level the situation is very critical for the moment. we don’t want to comment on this dramatic situation anymore; too much has already been said and too much will be said.
We only hope you are all well and that things are going better .As you know we have 3 main productions: wine, honey and oil.
We will try briefly, not to bore you, to make a picture of what we have done in the company in the last month.April is a period of rebirth of nature after winter. the vines begin to sprout, the bees come out of hibernation and prepare all for the new production year, the olive trees put the new leaves and prepare for the flowering that will take place in late May. For us too it is a period of recovery and more work.
We arranged the vineyards after the winter pruning and prepared for the season,this period is wonderful in the vineyard. For a few years, cultivation has focused on organic method, which for us is not a simple abandonment of synthetic products, but a way of making our vineyard a complete ecosystem in balance and where biodiversity triumphs. From the photos you can see how we have now reached an almost total grassing, full of many essences typical of our climate area. In April the herbs grow together with the vines and make the first blooms this fills the vineyard with flowers, insects, butterflies and many animals and makes us ecstatic. A few days ago while cutting the grass under the vines (otherwise it gets too high) we found a lark (Aluada arvensis) with its little babies among the grasses where it had nested, this is beautiful, if you think this little bird is in sharp decline due to intensive and conventional agriculture.
In this period in work he is very focused on bees. Families grow in number, as the queen increases spawning and we must make sure that the bees are doing well and control swarming: a natural operation where the bee family divides in two because the bees make a new queen and the old one with a part of bees loyal to her, she leaves to give birth to another family in another place. (this is the natural method that allows bees to spread in nature!).
In April, therefore, we turn a lot for our apiaries to recover swarms to form new families and put the first layers for the production especially on the sulla (
Hedysarum coronarium) and acacia (Robinia pseudoacacia) our first monofloral productions.With the photos we hope to make you understand even the beauty of this phase, which takes us to wonderful places here in Val d’Orcia where we keep our bees. (we have about ten apiaries scattered throughout the area)
We also dedicated a few days to the olive trees but only for cleaning work: there is not much to do right now.
There would still be many things to say, but in order not to tire you, we say goodbye here and we will talk next month.
We hope you enjoy these emails – we send you a big hug and a wish that everything goes well.A presto
FEDERICO – DARIO – HUBERT – PATRIZIA – COSTANZA E MATILDE
The reason why it works is because it’s genuine. There’s no “best practice” for e-mail campaigns anywhere in here.
There’s no attribution code or conversion button. They weren’t selling us on anything in particular. They had no CTA. There was no other reason to send this email but to tell us about why Spring is their favorite time of year because of their product.
During the pandemic: More. of. this. please.