Matamata farm boy heads to Italy on viticulture mission

Ben Richards will be buffing up his schoolboy Italian as he packs his bags for a Romeo Bragato exchange scholarship trip early next year. The former Matamata man, who is a double degree student at EIT in Hawke’s Bay, has travelled to Australia and the US before but never to Europe. So the 21-year-old is very much looking forward to his month in Italy, where he will visit wineries, vineyards and the Scuola di Viticoltura e di Enologica di Conegliano in the country’s northeast.