A company made up of enologists, specialized
technicians in the production of wine, was set up in Molinella in the Bologna
metropolitan area in the early 2000s. Alea Evolution works with international
markets and in 2022 almost reached €4 million, recording a 10% growth. For FARE
INSIEME, Giampaolo Colletti interviews Stefano Gulinelli, CEO of Alea Evolution
by Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
“Wine is for the soul what
water is for the body. Wine, especially in Italy, is the poetry of the land”, wrote Mario Soldati, a protagonist of Italian literature of the past century
who was in love with that fruit of the land contained in a good glass of wine.
Today, however, wine culture is a hybrid between tradition and innovation,
knowledge and evolved technologies. This is the key to understanding the story
of a business set up in Emilia and now conquering the markets worldwide.
Everything started off from the idea of two enologists, Enrico Bortolini e Gianpaolo Gulinelli, who, for over two
decades, worked with processing aids and biotechnologies applied to good wine
and good food and who decided to get busy in the early 2000s. And so Alea
Evolution was born in 2009, a company that proposes aids, additives and
biotechnologies for food and wine. We find ourselves in Molinella, a town of
15,000 inhabitants located in the north-eastern tip of the metropolitan city of
Bologna. The name Molinella derives from the presence of the many water mills
that was once a feature there but have now largely disappeared. But now we are
now talking about water, but of wine. And of a lot of research. Because Alea
Evolution - a company that now boasts a team of twenty employees and agents -
revolves around research.
Work
with the clients. The company works on the international market and
its clients include wine-making companies and wine producers for a turnover
that in 2002 almost reached €4 million with a 10% growth over the past three
years. “Our business is made of enologists, technicians specialized in the
production of wine with several years of experience and with distinct technical
and professional skills. Everything begins from the willingness to provide
clients with ideas and solutions for the problems that can be encountered along
the production chain”, illustrates Stefano Gulinelli, an enologist committed to
overseeing all the aspects of the production chain. Today, he deals mainly with
the production of food processing aids and is the CEO of Alea Evolution. “The
attention to the client and the constant search for quality are the values on
which our company is based and that drove us to turn our passion into a work
philosophy that we pursue every day. Our main objective is to become a key
partner for all those who are always looking for new technologies and ideas to
enhance and improve production processes and reach new quality standards
without disregarding organoleptic qualities, which are at the base of our
country’s tradition and culture”, stresses Gulinelli.
The obsession with research. Research, as has
been mentioned. A lot of it, transversal, passionate and continuously evolving. “All those who produce wine professionally are
looking for solutions to enable them to improve production processes from both
a qualitative and economic point of view, maximising results. Research evolves
every day based on the new problems the market has to tackle. Grapes and wine
are products that undergo many changes depending on the year, season and
multiple other variables. The incessant analysis of these parameters and
continuous lab assessments of the effectiveness and reactivity of active
principles on the single problems and single wines enables us to always
recommend new highly-performing solutions”, says
Gulinelli. The quality department is pivotal. It is made up of skilled
technicians from the wine world and other professionals from the food sector.
Professionalism and passion. Once again, the necessary skills are combined with
the desire to make the difference. “Because, in a market that privileges
standardised and uniform products, we can also focus on unique products made to
measure for our clients”, concludes Gulinelli. The main market is Italy but,
over the past few years, Alea has registered increasing interest from the
European and global wine market, which we always tackle in the same way: by
understanding the needs of the market and of the client. Then by studying
specific solutions, tailor-made just like tailors sewing a suit. In this way,
the company grows even nearer to clients, becoming a travel companion and
almost a best friend. After all, wine helps. Molière said so himself: “Great is
the fortune of he who possesses a good bottle, a good book, and a good friend”.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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