'Some years ago, my passion always growing for the white wines and my desire to produce white wine to recount the limestone and the sense of the rock of the Iblei Mounts, I started to search for a place where to plant a new vineyard. On 2016 after some research, I found Santa Margherita, a contrada I felt in love with, at the base at the foot of Chiaramonte Gulfi, an ancient village on the Iblei Mounts.
The vineyard, sited at 490 meters on the level of the sea, surrounded by Pine Forest, oaks and secular olive trees, is divided in 4 parcels on sandy calcareous marl of whitish colour, with sand and yellowish white calcarenites. The parcels Costa Sud and Costa Nord, with a training system method called alberello, they have rich soil about gypsum and fossils and give complexity and salinity. The parcels Terrazza and Trefile, with a training system, alberello growing on trellis, are rich about limestone and give more pulp and acidity.
The variety? The Grillo. White grape variety, with great personality, very diffused in the west Sicily and since last ten years in East Sicily too with historic name of Riddu. Probably it is a cross of Zibibbo and Catarratto. It has a good aromatic intensity, That reminds you of typical citrus notes accompanied by spicy vegetal notes and white flowers. It has a good balance between the alcoholic sensation and the acidity, and it is particularly savoury. In this way, I would like that this variety be considered an intermediary, a tool available to the terroir and not the aim. The wine, after a short maceration of 48 hours, ferment spontaneously in concrete and oval Austrian oak barrel, in which it has aged for 12 months.' Arianna Occhipinti
ARIANNA OCCHIPINTI, VITTORIA Biodynamic principles, natural, very limited availability
Arianna Occhipinti is the niece of Giusto Occhipinti of the legendary COS estate in Vittoria, south-eastern Sicily. Despite being relatively young, she is clear about her ethos and philosophy, which is to produce wines that express the unique territory of their native Iblein mountain vineyards. It is a windswept place with reddish, iron-rich soils and crabbed trees which hunch over low stone walls surrounding the vineyards.
Agricultural traditions here are millenia-old and the SP68 cuvees indeed allude to this fact. The Strada Provinciale 68 is but a continuation of a three thousand year old stone track which ancient farmers would have used to bring their own wines to the coastal trading towns of Lentini and Catania. “Never as in Bombolieri I can feel that I'm carrying with me past and future at the same time. It was the oldest wine route ever documented.” All the vineyards are worked using biodynamic principles and the work in the cellar is measured… not pushing the wine in any way… letting it find its own space… natural yeasts, no temperature control, no fining or filtration and minimal SO2 at bottling.