“If you want to be a great artist, of course you have to invent something : you must to have a beautifull mind, a beautifull heart, beautifull hands.. “
For this episode, Caroline Meesemaecker visited Luca Sanjust at Petrolo Estate. This nature lover runs an estate of immense beauty and produces magnificent wines. He tells us with great sensitivity about his passion for wine and the link that permanently binds him to his love of art.
Why did you decide to put Galatrona on La Place de Bordeaux?
“I think Bordeaux wine merchants have been doing their job for many years, hundreds of years. And I think they are the best at doing that.
They are very good. And I believe everyone has their own role in life. We are good at producing wine—or at least we hope to be great at it. We try to make great wines. We do make great wines.
And I believe that the same level of quality we put into production must be reflected in the distribution. And I think Bordeaux wine merchants, they are the best in the world at that right now.
We started many, many years ago, 30 years ago, selling Galatrona around the world. So, I think Galatrona is well-known. But I believe that with La Place, we can add something more. We can expand further around the world. We can really arrive to everyone.
Not everyone, of course, because the production of Galatrona isn’t huge. At the end of the day, it’s a small production. But with Bordeaux wine merchants, I think we can be more precise and go deeper into different markets around the world.”
Petrolo in 3 words ?
“Three words: Identity, unicity, and beauty or harmony. Beauty and harmony are the same thing for me. But identity and unicity, for sure.”
Do you happen to draw a parallel between your former life as an artist and your current life as a wine-grower?
“I think my previous life has taught me to be precise, to be unique, and to be true. True is beauty, and beauty is truth. But it’s also about not making shortcuts, being really focused on the point. If you want to be a good artist or a great artist, of course, you have to invent something.
You must have a beautiful mind, a beautiful heart, and beautiful hands. Mind, heart, and hands make art, but they also make wine—together with a beautiful piece of land, of course. So, the concept of perspective, the concept of harmony, the concept of putting all the elements together in the right place is very important in art, but it’s also especially important for wine.
When many elements work together to reach the goal of making a great wine, you need many, many things coming together. This is very similar to art. Sometimes people say to me, “Being an artist, a painter, and a winegrower is the same thing.”
No, they are two completely different things because wine is made by both man and nature, whereas art is made only by man. But for sure, when I was an artist, the precision, the concentration, the identity—being fully present in that moment, doing something where only you are doing that in that exact moment—was very important.
This is also true for wine because, as I was saying before, unicity and identity are very important to make a great wine.”
