An out-of-this-world choice for telling terroir, poetry, and grape juice.

“Wine must be alive, mutable; it must be the truest expression of the environment and culture of the men who produce it. So those who drink Sicilian wines must find themselves inside Sicily, in its many and very diverse territorial and cultural realities.” Salvo Foti, winemaker.

We chose a few small producers of natural wines; “small” in terms of area under vines and number of bottles produced, but “large” in terms of the quality of their wines. With these winemakers we share the underlying philosophy that guides them in the production of their wines: respect for nature, for the traditions and culture of an area, for the soil and for the vineyard. From this respect arises the choice to recover and enhance the native grape varieties of the production areas. And always from this “respect” also comes the careful and patient care of the vineyard which requires a lot of manual work but also allows to obtain an excellent raw material, the exclusion of chemistry both in the vineyard and in the cellar, privileging ancient techniques such as grassing and green manure which conserve and increase the fertility of the soil and the biodiversity of the ecosystem, the use of only indigenous yeasts (those naturally present on the grapes) instead of those selected. The artisanal size of these companies allows for manual harvesting, which allows producers the “luxury” of choosing the best bunches, resulting in minimal processing in the cellar. All this allows the wine to best express the characteristics of the grape variety and its specific territory, what the French call “terroir”.

“Let nature takes its course and let the harmony and energy of plants be transmitted from the bunches to the wine, completely expressing the territory to which they belong.” Marco Sferlazzo, Gate of the Wind.

“Accepting the diversity of soils, wind, soil slope, altitude and all that constitutes the originality of a vineyard. A wine must know of the land from which it is born (….). The development of healthy soil and a balanced ecosystem within the vineyard, however, means more work and, above all, more manual labor. We harvest it by hand and while it is more tiring, on the other hand I can allow myself the luxury of choosing only the best, healthiest and most mature bunches. And when I put the vintage on the bottle I remember those grapes, because the vintage of a wine is the vintage of the grape harvest: everything starts from the fruit, from the beginning (….). Moving to the cellar then becomes simpler and less interventionist (….). Natural wine starts from respect for the soil and the vineyard. From the idea that the portion of land we have has been given to us as a gift and one day we will leave it to those who come after us, with the obligation to give it to them healthy and more cared for than we found.” Arianna Occhipinti, Natural Woman, Fandango Libri