There is no better way to introduce Marco Durante than to let him speak for himself.

Mr. Kurtz is a noise. It is a stain, a voice. It is my voice on wine.

My name is Marco Durante, Mr. Kurtz is the heart of an extraordinary novel: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

I am a small winemaker: I grow my vineyard on a beautiful hill, in Vallupina

by Lake Trasimeno. And sometimes also in other impervious places of my little geography.

Conditions permitting, I try to question my ideas about wine by making wine together with other winemakers.

Sometimes, upon request, I also help other winemakers to create wines according to their wishes.

This is what I do.

My story is easily told: I spent more than 25 years exploring wine as an enthusiast, as a taster, even a scribbler and sometimes a divulger. I met "natural" wine around 20 years ago and we have stuck together ever since. For a few years my body and my mind have been fully occupied in cultivating grapevines, creating wine and learning about it.

It was the ending of a journey that brought me under my mountain. That was also the beginning of my lonely climb, the search of my path to the summit.

What I think about wine is very simple: it is my voice. It is the voice of the earth and of the grape from which it generates, but above all, it is the voice of my soul and of my way of life.

– I'm all about essentiality: doing things with a pure, disciplined, incisive gesture.

– I hate shortcuts: the use of technical aids that simplify the processes, the obsessive tension towards a defined stylistic objective. I like the discipline that frees the process.

– I hate predictable wines, like those that fall victim of fashion, technique, fear or expectations. I love magical wines that draw energy from themselves, as if they had a life of their own.

– I never chase a wine project: I have ideas but the ingredients that outline the profile of the wine are the vintage, the grapes, the spontaneous fermentation and my emotions of the moment.

– I love to make wines that are free to bring along all the energy nature has given them. And if their destiny is to fall into their abysses, I do not like to stop them. I love to contain them before they become folklore or, even worse, slovenly.

– I have a physical relationship with wine. My body and my mind are always with my vineyard and with my wine, they are part of the vineyard and part of the wine. This is the privilege and the dimension of my life choice.

– I love tradition, I hate rhetoric. I hate roots that enslave you. I love to look ahead with my feet well planted on the ground. I love the wines of the future when they respect Time.

– I love to think of my wines always in relation with my table: without food there is no wine, it is as simple as that.

– I love to challenge my limits and the limits of wine: I use no other "rope" than my nose, my hands and my heart.

– I love Kurtz, because Kurtz has the courage to be Nature itself, but also Energy, Horror, Magic. If you put Nature inside a cage, if you bring Kurtz home, Nature disappears and Kurtz dies. And everything becomes a SYMPTOM.

My Mr Kurtz, the ending to my journey through fear and courage and towards my destiny was wine. Wine is my life. Mr. Kurtz is a metonymy: I AM WINE.