«"Stick yourself in the mud," they say: "We were sad and filled with rage out there, in the sweet air that rejoices in the sunlight."» (Inferno, Canto VII, vv. 121-122)
Everything has been said about Beppe Mancini and perhaps even what actually never happened, because it’s a bit like this: in front of certain figures all of us (and I challenge anyone of you to say you haven’t done it at least once in your life with someone) arrogate to ourselves the right to say our fucking opinion, to judge what we don’t know, to express and often to blast blindly because it is easier to look outside than inside. Let’s talk clearly, we are not talking about a saint (but those, if they haven’t told you yet, are only in Heaven for those who believe), we are talking about a figure at times controversial but who perhaps paid too much for the will to be himself at his own risk and peril, paid perhaps for the will to live in his own way (and trust me, it is the desire of many).
THE SOLID DISPLAY CASE
Beppe seems effectively a character inside the Divine Comedy, a character however who traverses it from top to bottom, who through his own personal journey lives firsthand hell, purgatory and heaven. We won’t be here to tell you in which circle he is because it’s his own fucking problem, we will be here to tell about the man, his lived experience, because all of us traverse those circles and we do it every day; only that often we are too caught up by what is around us to listen and live. And so we like to talk about someone who, with his pros and cons, made his journey and does it every day, and we like to talk about a man who has lived.
«The “public Beppe” is not a character built at a table, it is an amplified version of what I have always been in work: presence, energy, capacity to read a room and guide an experience. But it is true that, when you are in contexts of high intensity like hospitality and the world of spirits, that dimension requires a lot of physical and mental energy. The difference today is that I no longer live that total overlap between professional identity and personal identity. In the past, especially in the most structuring experiences also in realities like Diageo, I tended not to separate the two things much: I was always “inside”, always available, always turned on. This gives you so much in terms of growth and results, but in the long term it asks you a price. Today instead I look for a different balance. The public role exists when it is needed, in the right context, but it cannot consume everything else. Outside of that context I am a much simpler person: I need silence, normality, real relationships and spaces in which I don’t have to perform anything. I don’t believe that the “character” is consuming the man. I believe rather that, with time, you learn not to confuse the two things. And when you manage to separate them, you understand that the true strength is not to be always at the maximum in front of others, but to know when to turn everything off and return simply to be yourself.»
LIVING FOR THE CAUSE, UNTIL BURNING INSIDE
We ask ourselves often if this will of the new generations (and yes, how old we feel in saying it) to make “fewer sacrifices” is truly a desire to not do or if it is only the reaching of an awareness, the one that life is working but that one doesn’t live to work. And when we analyze this concept, perhaps we should stop for a moment and ask ourselves: are they truly wrong or perhaps are they doing what we would have never been able or wanted to do? Are they really giving up on work, are they truly stopping to be numbers inside companies or are they stopping to give up on life? There would be perhaps to stop and understand, or perhaps we are not ready to do it because stopping would oblige us often to say that we are making enormous sacrifices and enormous renunciations for something that does not belong to us. Or maybe we of Spaghetty are wrong now.
«Regarding my personal path, I belong to a generation that in the world of spirits and hospitality grew up with a very extreme culture of work. In realities like Diageo I learned discipline, pressure, very high standards and especially the value of execution. I gave everything, often putting work ahead of any other thing, because that was the professional language we knew: to demonstrate one’s value through total dedication. With time you understand however that no company, even the biggest or most important, truly coincides with your personal identity. Companies make industrial choices, people instead must build a human and professional path that is more sustainable. When I look at the kids of today I don’t consider them weaker, on the contrary. I believe they have developed an awareness that our generation often did not have: to protect clarity, energy and mental health does not mean having less ambition. It means wanting to last longer. I don’t deny anything of my path, because those sacrifices formed me and gave me skills, resilience and international vision. But today I learned that the true success is not only how much you are willing to sacrifice, but managing to maintain passion, balance and identity even after the hardest experiences.»
"BLOND WAS HE, AND BEAUTIFUL, AND OF GENTLE ASPECT" (PURGATORIO, CANTO III, V. 107)
And like Manfredi, character of Purgatorio, Beppe seems to have paid for the will to be in his own way; and like him he appears in his strong and direct personality, but with an evident and deep wound that perhaps he doesn’t hide so much, because it is from wounds that perhaps rebirths start. And it is like this that we see Vetz (careful, we are not here to do the usual marketing marketta, we only want to talk about rebirth, of victories and of paths, and this project is it). We simply asked him how one manages to find a balance so thin without cheating with chemistry.
«When you work with botanicals like chamomile, elderflower and vanilla, the risk is that one note prevails over the others or that the product loses gustatory tension, becoming too floral, too sweet or little dynamic in mixing. The true work was to build balance: to give enough bitter structure for the contemporary aperitif, maintaining however aromatic elegance and drinkability. Today the market requires extremely versatile products: they must work neat, in a Spritz, in low-alcohol cocktails and also in more evolved mixology. For this it was fundamental to work on the natural aromatic persistence and on the management of the sugar component, avoiding that it covered the botanical freshness. The complexity, therefore, was not creating a “different” bitter, but creating a distinctive organoleptic identity that remained coherent, clean and recognizable in every context of consumption, without ever betraying the naturalness of the product. Yes, I believe that the idea of a gentler elegance was one of the things that brought me closer to this project. Today the consumer looks for complexity and identity, but also balance, drinkability and authenticity. Vetz is born precisely from this vision: to have character without having to be aggressive.»
WE ARE NOT HERE TO PREACH FROM THE PULPIT
And for all those who expect from us slaps in the face, offenses and presumption, you will remain a bit disappointed, because what we love to do in this fucking project is only to go deep, to tell about people for what they are, without embellishing them or making them ugly, without telling uncomfortable truths or putting people at discomfort, but only telling their world. And if you want to know more about people we invite you to call them, to go out with them, to go visit them.
«I don’t see the past as a pending account with someone to whom I “gifted” something they didn’t deserve. I see a path made of total choices, taken with the awareness that I had at that moment. Even the hardest experiences, including those lived inside big realities like Diageo, I don’t read them today as loss, but as construction. Silence, if anything, does not bring with it regret, but clarity. It makes you understand what you want to keep and what you don’t want to repeat anymore. In this sense, projects like Vetz do not “repair” the past: they re-elaborate it. They allow you to bring inside everything you learned, but with a different relationship with your time, your energy and your value. If I could speak with the me of back then, I wouldn’t stop him. I wouldn’t protect him from the path he made. I would tell him only to observe better, to listen more also to what is not being said, and to never confuse dedication with personal cancellation. Because without that passage I wouldn’t have arrived here. And here is not a “better” or “worse” arrival point, it is simply a point in which today I have more awareness, more choice and more balance.»
We spoke with the man, not with the character; we spoke with the soul of a figure for certain aspects controversial, we spoke with one who in the end always does whatever the fuck he wants (and how many of us would want to be able to do it) and especially we waited months before receiving the answers (you know that we love you, but this we had to say it). And we brought one thing home, we brought home an extreme gentleness and perhaps, for certain aspects, the face of HOSPITALITY, word with which everyone fills their mouth, at times without sense.
