Occhipinti Santa Margherita (SM) Bianco 2023

Some years ago, my passion always growing for 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. In 2016 after some research, I found Santa Margherita, a contrada I fell 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. They are sediments that comes from sea since Pleistocene period. 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 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 remind 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 savory. 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, ferments spontaneously in concrete and oval Austrian oak barrel, in which it has aged for 12 months. ARIANNA OCCHIPINTI