"My father would never interfere when
Tesio was alive," the Marchese recalls.
"But he showed his own capacity with
horses afterward, winning many Classic
races. We had started bringing the hors-
es here when we sold Olgiata, where they
would previously have gone for the winter.
At that time, the vineyard was a hobby and
the racing was the main activity. Now it's
the other way round.
"I think if you have good terroir, it's
probably easier to make good wine than
to breed a good racehorse. So many things
can happen to a horse, you need so much
luck. Last year we lost both our best two
horses in the clinic after they suffered
fractures on the track.
"You try to put together the right quali-
ties of the mares with the right qualities in
the stallion. But the best nominations are
now so expensive. In my father's day you
could get them for £500, now it's €150,000.
"We had 30 or 40 mares but have now cut
down to about 20, so that we can try and im-
prove the quality of the stallion. Half of the
mares go to England, Ireland, or France, and
some will stay there year round.
"There are new bloodlines, too: we try to
maintain diversity. We do have one mare
from the Ribot line. Sometimes families
will decline, they're not easy to maintain.
But you know probably 70 percent of the
world's racehorses descend from Nearco."
