Thinking
How I look at plants
A collection of essays on the themes I return to most often when explaining an assignment to a client or discussing a case with a colleague. These are not manifestos: they are the way I think about the craft — the agronomist as observer, the plant as a living being, pruning as an act of respect, natural wine as an honest agreement, biodiversity not as ideology but as a tool.
The agronomist is an observer
For decades, agriculture has been characterised by the constant, direct and profound modification of the environment in which plants grow. That approach — the one that tends to force the system — has failed. Engaging with a natural system requires studying and recognising the phenomena that unfold in the cultivated field, and then managing them well. Not overwriting them.
A good agronomist is first of all an observer: they observe the natural disposition of an environment, encourage and imitate its equilibria, and spread quality agriculture — efficient, sustainable, landscape-generating. This approach is now shared even in the most intensive agricultural contexts: green manures in protected crops, releases of antagonist insects and beneficial fungi, induction of the plant’s natural defences. Tools of the up-to-date agronomist — and often the most economically viable options too.
The agroecosystem is not a virgin forest
The “naturalistic” approach, in some farms, translates into letting nature take its course — a philosophy that would be more honestly described as abandonment. The agroecosystem is not a natural equilibrium, as a virgin forest would be: it is a system in which human intervention has profoundly altered its essence. It cannot be treated as such. The resilience of the system will not produce the grape or the vegetable being sought.
This is why managing an organic, biodynamic or “natural” farm requires even greater professionalism than managing a conventional one: recreating, within the farm, sub-systems that resemble natural ones. Soil, root symbioses, microhabitats for antagonists, defence inducers, biological cycle monitoring. There is no ideological shortcut.
Pruning is an act of respect
The relationship established in agriculture between a person and a plant is a symbiotic one between two organisms. Symbiosis is the association between two or more individuals in which both benefit from shared life, or one benefits without harming the other. In this light, the term I prefer to capture the spirit in which pruning should be practised sits well: respect.
I have no interest in romantic speculations about love for plants, or in imagining feelings in vegetable beings. The point is different: modelling a living being without considering that vessels, hormones, equilibria and defences are actively at work within it is anything but clever or practical. There are no perfect training forms or cutting techniques. The only solution is to evaluate every aspect, leaving none out.
Natural wine: a greatness and a risk
Natural wine is an agreement between producer and customer to avoid many of the compromises that classical oenology accepts — stability, brilliance, colour and softness obtained at the expense of body, complexity, aromatic intensity. That is its greatness. But among the countless products on the market there are vast differences: highly interesting wines, and wines with faults that are not the result of rejected compromises but of winemaking errors.
Many volatile molecules considered responsible for olfactory faults share one characteristic that is hard to contest: beyond a certain threshold of presence, they make any wine identical to any other. The fight against homogenisation cannot slide into an even more pronounced homogenisation.
Science and legends
Should a vineyard be irrigated? Should olive trees be pruned every year? Should white wine be drunk young? Science, technology and culture in the agricultural and wine world are now so extensive that in reading and discussing them with various actors, one easily finds contradictory answers to the same questions — and often none of those answers is wrong.
Every variety, vintage, growing area and cellar has its own potential, to be identified and exploited for what it is. That is the only way to achieve excellent production. This is why the Studio refuses standard answers, and why every assignment begins with a site visit.
If any of these themes resonates with you, write to me — even just to discuss them.