There was no better place to be for the young Italian boy than sitting next to his grandfather, who was playing cards and sharing his homemade wine with his friends, in the Abruzzo region of Italy as there was always an electric energy in the air created by the deep connections of such intimate gatherings.
The young boy came from a multi-generational family of grape growers - no one in the family was a professional winemaker - yet his grandfather was a serious hobbyist in making wine in his home cellar. He spent so much time in his cellar making enough wine for himself and his friends that one would have thought he was a professional but that was the personality of this man, a person intensely driven by his passions.
