Arianna Occhipinti, Cerasuolo di Vittoria "Grotte Alte" 2019

50% Frappato, 50% Nero d'Avola

Sicily, Italy

Grotte Alte is Arianna's only DOCG wine, in this case Vittoria's most famous, Cerasuolo di Vittoria, a blend of the best native varietals, Nero d'Avola and Frappato. "Grotte Alte" is named for the limestone ridges on which the Occhipinti estate lies, straddling and combining both Mediterranean and mountain influences, with red and sandy clay soils over limestone at about 280 meters. Coming from a selection of older vines, a longer maceration and barrel aging, the Grotte Alte is essentially the "grown-up", appellation-designated version of the "baby" SP68 red IGT wine. 

Trained in a mix of alberello and guyot, the vines average 40 years old and are organically farmed and hand harvested. The fruit is destemmed and fermented with indigenous yeasts with a month-long maceration. The wine is aged for around 30 months in a 25-hectoliter Slavonian oak botte before being bottled unfiltered. Very small production. VEGAN.

Occhipinti is located in the Vittoria region of southeastern coast of Sicily between the Mediterranean Sea and inland mountains. Owner, winemaker and viticulturist Arianna Occhipinti founded the estate in 2004, bottled her first commercial vintage in 2006 and today works exclusively with estate fruit. Her 25 hectares are certified-organic and practicing biodynamic and feature only native Sicilian varietals.

Arianna started at age 16 in her uncle Giusto Occhipinti's cellar--he being the proprietor of Vittoria's most famous winery, COS--and loved it, enough to go to oenology school and to jump right into her own production. She began with a mere one hectare of abandoned vines attached to a family vacation house. Though university imparted technical knowledge of a sort, the main influence on her ways in vineyard and cellar was in fact her uncle, who raised his wines as well as his niece on organic viticulture, harvest by hand and native-yeast fermentations, none of which is typical of Sicily's bulk-driven wine production. In Arianna's own words; "Not irrigating, harvesting late and not using fertilizers are the secret to making more elegant wines in the area. The freshness and minerality in my wines come from the subsoils. Any wine made from young vines or chemically grown vines feeding only off of the top soil will have the cooked, hot characteristics people associate with wine from warm regions."

There was never any doubt in Arianna's mind about whether to pursue this natural approach in order to express the freshness of the Vittorian microclimate, the minerality of the chalky soils and the purity of the best local grape varieties. She made a number of other significant choices in pursuit of this balance. The farming is biodynamic. There is zero irrigation in her vineyards in this hot, windy climate. Cover crops including fava beans and other useful plants grow between every other row. New plantings are massale selections only. Juice and wine are moved only by gravity. There is no new oak. Arianna's star has risen very quickly over the last decade in the wine world, and she is rightly regarded as a symbol of success in the world of biodynamic farming and natural winemaking.