The Aristocats of the Wine Cellar

• A colony of cats that went from being a prob­lem to a nat­ur­al ally of the win­ery
• Ani­mal wel­fare as part of a liv­ing wine phi­los­o­phy
• Small deci­sions that reflect a con­scious way of inhab­it­ing the earth

There is life in every cellar.

Human, plant, micro­bial life… and also feline life.

At Bode­ga Fur­lot­ti, in addi­tion to vine­yards, bar­rels, and wine, nine cats now live. Eight white and one black. A small, fur­ry court that seems straight out of a movie: The Aris­to­cats of Fur­lot­ti. They did­n’t arrive by design or mar­ket­ing. They arrived because the land, when it’s alive, attracts life .

Where there is life, more life appears.

How it all began

It all started—as these sto­ries often do—by acci­dent.
A pair of wild cats took up res­i­dence at the back of the cel­lar.
And before we knew it, there was a whole fam­i­ly .

That’s where a key deci­sion emerged:
not to look the oth­er way.

For an entire month, with patience and per­se­ver­ance, they were caught one by one so they could be cas­trat­ed. With­out vio­lence. With­out rush­ing. With respon­si­bil­i­ty.

Car­ing also means tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty.

The ingenuity behind the rescue

In every good sto­ry, there’s some­one who solves the prob­lem. Here, it was Emilio , the cre­ator of the cage. He had orig­i­nal­ly built it to trap a fox that was eat­ing the chick­ens. (The fox, of course, nev­er fell for it .) But that same cage end­ed up serv­ing a much more impor­tant pur­pose:

Take care of life.

Today, all nine cats are neutered, healthy, calm, and at peace. There is no uncon­trolled repro­duc­tion. There is no suf­fer­ing. And the cel­lar remains rat-free thanks to them.

Nat­ur­al pest con­trol, cour­tesy of nature… and human inge­nu­ity.

More than cats: a way of being in the world

This sto­ry isn’t just about cats. It’s about how deci­sions are made. At Famil­ia Fur­lot­ti, we believe that the land isn’t some­thing to be owned. It’s some­thing to be cared for and shared .

Land is not inher­it­ed: it is cared for for those who come after.

When some­one takes the time to pro­tect the peo­ple who live in a place—even if they aren’t “pro­duc­tive” in eco­nom­ic terms—that speaks to a cer­tain eth­ic. And we’re con­vinced that this eth­ic is reflect­ed in the wine .

Liv­ing wines.
Bal­anced wines.
Wines with soul.

A final toast

We raise a glass to them.
To those who care.
To those who observe.
To those who under­stand that mak­ing wine also means tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for the life that sur­rounds it .

Because car­ing for life, in all its forms, is also mak­ing good wine.