Meet Your Makers: Cosimo Maria Masini

If you haven't tried Cosimo's wine & oil, you should! They are made my none other than Cosimo Maria Masini in Tuscany! Give these products a try and taste some of the best of Italy!

Tell us about your product/company/service.
Cosimo Maria Masini is a small vineyard and olive grove nestled in the Tuscany countryside, right between Pisa and Florence. We are focusing on biodynamic agriculture and natural wine making techniques – not only because we believe that it is better for the environment, but because we want to capture the unique characteristics of our farm, its soil and microclimate in our products. We are also trying to preserve biodiversity and that’s why we also have small productions of fruit, vegetables, honey and wheat. You might think all Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Tuscany is the same, because we share the same basic varieties, but that is not the case. Our 1,000 olive trees are nestled around the hilltop – the oils from the eastwards facing slopes are very different from those facing west. Our wines are Annick, Nicole, Nicolo’, Cosimo and Daphne – all named after family members. And then we make Sincero, a Happy Tuscan Wine we developed with our friends at Candid Wines. Sincero is only available in Chicago.

How often do you come out with new products? Are you working on anything new?
We are constantly experimenting with new things because we are very curious and dynamic and because we need to evolve. So every year we try something different, usually in small scale and if we like the results, then we work towards real production.
Both vines and olive trees take a long time to grow before they give you the first fruit, even longer until they are strong enough to give you the quality that makes great oil and wine. You can approximate 15 years for a vine to get to the point where it produces the quality grapes we like, and a good 30 years before an olive tree carries enough fruit to fill one single 16 oz bottle of oil. That being said, we have been working on isolating a very curious indigenous grape variety we found in our vineyards and hope that we can eventually add a new wine label. I love stuff like that – bringing old and forgotten varieties back. We also have identified another rare grape variety, Buonamico, and the almost extinct Mignola olive. With both we make very, very limited products.

Are your products sold anywhere besides Chicago?
Our Extra Virgin Olive Oil is a true rarity – we only have 1,000 trees, so that equals 1,000 bottles in a good year, none in a bad one. Lee at The Scrumptious Pantry is buying our whole production and most of it stays in Chicago. When you have so little, it is difficult to build large markets, especially as the yield can be drastically reduced in bad years. And we do not want to get into the business of buying other peoples oil and passing it off as our own. We believe in terroir, that food and wine have a sense of place.

What was the spark that led you to working with food?
This is actually a funny story. I had to leave Italy and move to London, of all places! You know when you are so used to something, you do not even fully recognize it’s beauty? I was born in Tuscany, food and wine were always a center piece of my life. When I moved to London to study Environmental Engineering, I suddenly found myself exposed to this circle of wine geeks. Sommelier classes. Tasting events. It was my awakening. “I want to make people happy like this with great wine”. When I got back to Tuscany after my studies I convinced my parents to move to the countryside – we found the perfect place and went to work. And work it was! The previous owners did not care and had been focused on growing quantity grapes. The soil was depleted, the historic cellars falling apart. The olives were in slightly better shape. They are very sturdy plants. There was no doubt in my mind that biodynamic agriculture was the one way to get life back into the estate. That was twelve years ago - and it has only been a few years now that we actually started selling our wines.

What do you see as the biggest benefit you offer to your retailers and consumers?
I think Americans really want to connect with their food again. When I visited Chicago last September I was blown away. You have access to so many great ingredients grown nearby, very creative chefs, so much curiosity on the consumers’ side about who grows the food. We are taking this whole concept a step further with biodynamic production – not only it is important who grows your food, but also all the other factors that make a difference: the soil, the microclimate, the so called “terroir”. This is why we love being part of The Scrumptious Pantry. They are really focused on capturing the terroir in their food products.

What is your favorite part of this job?
I am a very curious person. I really love staying immersed in the silence of nature as much as interacting with people. It is inspiring to be only surrounded by plants and animals, however I learn so much from direct interaction with our customers, too. Explaining our method of production, our wines and hearing their feedback is very important to me.

What is your least favorite part?
Bureaucracy!

What is your favorite story/anecdote that occurred along the way in creating your product?
I always tell people that I made some mistakes at the beginning of my adventure, but that I also realized that mistakes are necessary. They are the best way to learn and understand the real path you want to follow. So I realized that I did not need fancy consultants or useless expenses, but a lot of observation and sensibility, and this is the real essence of biodynamics. There have been times in which I was very discouraged and thought of closing the activity, but then some kind of spark or energy always made me change idea and continue with my path and I don’t regret that at all!

If you could have supper with 3 people (living or deceased), who would they be and why?
*Rudolf Steiner, the founder of biodynamic agriculture, our main light on the path we are following
*President Obama, to make him taste my wines!
*The Dalai Lama, to be enveloped by his spirituality