UNCORKED: Leadership Lessons from the Italian Vineyard

What if the best leadership playbook was written not in boardrooms—but in Italian vineyards?

UNCORKED: Leadership Lessons from the Italian Vineyard explores how leaders preserve what matters, adapt under pressure and lead for what endures. Drawing on two thousand years of Italian viticulture, Jason Harfield uses the vineyard as a disciplined lens for understanding leadership in complex environments.

Across centuries, Italian winemakers have faced collapse, regulation, reinvention, reputation, succession, climate pressure and the constant challenge of growth without losing identity. Their stories reveal patterns that feel strikingly familiar to modern leaders: systems under pressure, tradition challenged by disruption, culture shaping whether change takes hold, and reputation depending on substance rather than image.

From the rise and fall of Roman Falernum to the bold innovators of Toscana, from monastic stewardship to the Super Tuscan revolution, UNCORKED offers twelve leadership lessons on judgement, timing, transformation, culture, legacy and long-term value. This is not a wine book. It is a leadership book seen through the lens of Italian viticulture.

Written for CEOs, board directors, executives, advisors and leaders navigating uncertainty, UNCORKED offers a refined and practical perspective on the work of leadership: making trade-offs under pressure, protecting what matters, adapting with integrity and sustaining performance without losing purpose.

Because the leaders who endure, like the finest wines, are not rushed. They are shaped by their environment and refined over time.

JASON HARFIELD IS a board director, advisor and former chief executive who has spent his career leading transformation in high-accountability environments where decisions must work not only on paper but in real time, under pressure. He is known for bridging strategic intent with practical execution, guiding organisations through complex change and disruption, including the impacts of the COVID-19 period.Jason founded Cielo Azur to support leaders and boards navigating volatility, cultural reform and long-horizon transformation bringing a calm, systems-based approach that keeps humanity at the centre of change. Away from the boardroom, Jason's fascination with Italy, its history, landscapes and vineyards became more than a personal passion during the pandemic years. He went on to earn the Wine Scholar Guild's Italian Wine Scholar certification and continues to study wine as culture, craft and leadership in liquid form. A Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, he brings a rare combination of governance discipline and narrative warmth to UNCORKED, inviting readers to taste what enduring leadership looks like: adaptable, authentic and shaped over time.