The Marchesi Ginori Lisci family was first introduced to me in 2007 by Eric Munson, their New York importer from Dancing Bear Cellars.. I wrote a long post about the family on Avvinare in 2008.

Through an odd series of Florence related coincidences, the family is never very far from my thoughts. A dear old friend from Florence rents a home in their lovely borgo called Querceto and on a recent night in Florence, another person I know brought me a bottle of wine that they said I had to try. It was the Campo Ordigno from the Ginori Lisci family.

What I didn’t know, until I discovered it by chance at Vinitaly was that the family is now producing energy while making wine. As we all look at the disaster that is happening in the Gulf right now with the oil spill, my thoughts turn to people who are trying to protect our environment.

I was pleased to discover that the Ginori Lisci family is so attentive to their environs. Together with Biogas, the family has started a project that will produce enough energy for 1200 families and for their 2000 hectare agricultural farm, no mean feat, without producing an extra gram of Co2. The new project will produce 5.6 kW a year. The project is in the Val di Cecina in Tuscany. The raw material to produce this energy comes from 280 hectares of corn and other crops as well as the remains from their winemaking activities.

The project cost 3 million euro and should be amortized within five years. Some 49% of the energy produced will be sold back to the national energy grid.

I found this news fascinating. A number of wineries at Vinitaly were talking about this issue and an entire book on the use of agricultural land to create a new economy was discussed at a press conference I went to at the fair. I look forward to more news of success for the Ginori Lisci family and for others that have the opportunity and the means to follow suit.