Occhipinti SP68 Rosso Terre Siciliane 2022

Everything begun fifteen years ago in the ”Fossa di Lupo” area. A place where the land in the evening becomes redish and is brushed by the Ibleian winds and leans on one side of a road: the County Road 68. A county road like many others, but with a special past.

It was once a stone narrow path; three thousand years ago it connected Gela to Kamarina, it travelled- as it still does - through the Cerasuolo di Vittoria roads hills and from Caltagirone continued to Catania and Lentini. There, squeezed between heaven and earth, that road also marked my destiny. In the first hectare of land next to my palmento, in Fossa di Lupo District, others followed. The firm grew into the Bombolieri, Pettineo and Bastonaca Districts, Yet, everything is still the same as in the first year. Bombolieri is also located on the County Road 68. The vineyard here enlarges and it stoops onto the limestone base of the area, the vineyards are twenty years old if not more, and the court on which the wineries raise themselves is able to trap all the strength of the Ibleian sun. Nowhere else I can feel to have been walking on a coherent road. 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. That road was used by generations of farmers to bring their own wine to the coast.

Wine Notes: 70% Frappato/30% Nero d'Avola. The two varietals are native to Sicily and are grown on red sand soils over limestone rock, with vines averaging 15 years old on four different sites. The vines are organically farmed and hand-harvested. The fruit is mainly destemmed (4% stem inclusion in the upcoming 2017 vintage) and co-fermented with native yeasts in concrete tanks and with a two-week skin maceration. The wine is aged in concrete tank for 8 months and bottled unfiltered. The wine is named "SP68" for the road near Arianna's home vineyard in Vittoria.