Every now and then, I stop for a moment.

I look up and watch my colleagues.

I look at them with admiration and gratitude, and I think about how far this Acetaia has come.

My Acetaia.

As I watch them, my mind goes back to the beginning, when I was alone and my father believed this business could never offer me a future worthy of the effort it required.

After all, just twelve years ago, Modena was a very different place.

Experiential tourism was almost unheard of, and talking about it felt as unlikely as saying that aliens were about to arrive.

International visitors came to Italy to explore cities such as Florence, Venice, or Rome.

If they came to Modena, it was often to visit Ferrari before continuing their journey.

The idea of building a business around tourism—especially inside a traditional balsamic vinegar producer—understandably seemed ambitious, if not completely unrealistic.

But I felt, deep inside, that it was the right direction.

And I fought to make it possible.

From January to June this year, we welcomed just over one thousand guests from all over the world.

When I saw that number, I did not feel that I had reached a destination.

I felt gratitude.

And joy.

A great deal of joy.

But there is something else I think about whenever I pause to reflect on this journey.

I think about the people who now work alongside me.

At the beginning, there was nothing.

No team.

No certainty.

Today, seeing this reality continue to grow, and knowing that what once existed only as an intuition has become an opportunity for others to build their own professional path, is probably the greatest satisfaction I could ever have hoped for.

It is not the kind of pride that makes you feel you have arrived.

It is a quieter kind of pride.

A deeper one.

The happiness of seeing a passion, nurtured with patience, sacrifice, and determination, become an opportunity for someone else.

Every person who becomes part of this journey reminds me how great my responsibility is—to continue earning the trust of those who work with me and of every guest who chooses to step through the doors of our Acetaia.

Perhaps that is why I never seem able to stop.

I keep imagining.

I keep studying.

I keep searching for new ways to tell the same tradition.

Not because what we have achieved is not enough, but because I believe that every project born from genuine love for what you do has a responsibility to keep growing.

It is a natural instinct I neither can nor want to silence.

So we keep moving forward.

Always.

With the desire to do just a little better today than we did yesterday.

Twelve years ago, some people thought it was madness.

Today, perhaps, that madness has simply become part of our everyday life.

And the most beautiful part is that I still look at it with the very same enthusiasm I had back then.

With gratitude.

With tears in my eyes.

And with the certainty that the most beautiful part of the journey is not the one already behind me, but the one that is still waiting to begin.

Sofia