Wine, Poetry and Art Reflect The Voice of Mt. Etna - Al-Cantàra Winery

Mount Edna was quiet. Until it wasn't. We were at the foot of the volcano, capturing the story of Alcantara winery. Just four weeks before it erupted. On the slopes of Mount Edna, where fire and ash forged the land, a small Sicilian winery is turning wine into something more. A multi-century expression of place, passion and poetry, told not only through taste, but through art. What is it about this place that makes it the perfect place to tell the story of Mount Edna through the voice of your wines? What do you feel every day when you arrive here? I'm here, I feel the peace. I feel the Mount Edna, the supervisor of our estate. This makes me feel happy and a sense of peace inside. There is indescribable. The Mount Edna just sits there and you say, yeah, like a supervisor or maybe almost like a guardian? Yes, the Mount Edna, it's not like it's the guardian of our land. All our land. The Mount Edna is our mother. We are here only for her. And she directs us to how we grow our grape and how we make the good wine that we produce. The Mount Edna, especially our soil, give to our wines some characteristics that are unique of our areas. There are the minerality and the freshness in all our wine. But in Mount Edna, we can express these characteristics in the wine. And this is really important. But we don't have only the Mount Edna. About 200 meters the other side, we have the river Alcantara that help us to the climatic changes about day and night. The temperature go down in the night. And this is help much the vineyard to grow a quality grapes. In the summer, in the rest of the season, the temperature are about 45 degrees. Here, the temperature don't go up 35, 34. In the night, we arrive until 18, 19. It's really different. And this temperature change make our grapes really equilibrate. So it matures slowly. Why this explains how you make the wine that I first tasted in, I think it was like 2016. And it was a Pinot Noir. And it was like, okay, normally Pinot Noir, you only grow in and you only produce in the colder region, like Burgundy or the Yarra Valley in Australia. And here, a Pinot Noir from Italy, from Sicily, from Mount Edna. And we said, how is it possible? We got to try and we tried it. And it's what you said. It was so fresh. It had this minerality that lifted it even up more. And just these subtle nuances expressed so well in the wine. How were you able to capture the minerality in a diurnal change into a wine like that? It's not difficult. The soil, the Etna really help us and also the Alcantara. We maintain the purity of the grape. We don't go to abuse the elaboration. Our vineyards are all organic certified for this reason. Because our objective is to maintain the identity of the territory. Here, the soil is very rocky. I mean, look at that. How can you grow something in here? I mean, it's just rocks. We have 16 hectares of vineyards. We primarily produce Caricante, Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio. They are the variety of Doc Etna, white and red. But we also have two little spaces dedicated to Pinot Noir and also Cabernet Sauvignon. To see the expression of this grape here. In our most selled wine, there is 80% Mascalese, 20% Cappuccio. The Cappuccio is more aromatic and softer tannin and much gentler. Instead, the Nerello Mascalese is much stronger and elegant. Okay, and so when you combine the two, what do you get? For me, we get the real expression of Doc Etna. So to me, when you were telling me that I could not help. I mean, I'm in Italy here after all. When you were talking about the Nerello Mascalese and then the Cappuccio, I just had to think of Romeo and Juliet. Because the Cappuccio is softer and the Mascalese was stronger. So stronger, yes. Is that a good way to think about it? Yes, it's a good point for me. I surely use that in the future. But of course, the sad thing is Romeo and Juliet never got together. So at least you were able to make... This is Romeo and Juliet, but at the end, they married. Exactly. They found love. We try to catch every single terroir in every single label that we create. For this reason, we have 16 types of wines that we produce. Because every single micro arias inside our state is a unique expression of the Alcantara estate. For this reason, we try to keep this in one bottle, that in one bottle. But we also try to catch the real expression of different wines. For this reason, we pass about five or six times in different days during harvest to waiting for the good moment of the maturation of the grapes. Okay, so the different harvest timings, you said five to six times? Yes. No way, yeah. We start with the sparkling and that is the first harvest. In the same rows, we pass after three, four days to harvest the Anotturna. That is our Nerello Mascalese vinificated as white wine. After that, about two, three days, we repass in the same rows for the Rosato wine. At the end, we pass to harvest all the rest of the rows for the red. We decide the day before to harvest the day next, because we are waiting for the exact moment. Not one day much, not one day before. Whoa, so the day before you harvest, you call it. On the winemaking side here, Mount Etna gives you what she can possibly give you. And you do all the work to pick the grape at the right time, the day before you decide. But then, what is your philosophy? What is your approach to make sure that you capture and maintain the identity of the terroir you harvested? For maintaining the identity of the soil, the terroir, and all that influences our grape, we use the harvest for sure. But also, we respect the grape in the cellar, because the identity is correlated to the grapes. So we're doing nothing. All is about the grape. But the door, I have a little story to tell you. As you can see, the door is a face. This is the face of the Pircanti. The Pircanti are a little elf that, in Mount Etna, rob the treasure of the villagers and hide inside the cave. Inside of this cave, you can find acciuvatura in Sicilian. In English, it's the finding, the thing that you find. The label of our wine starts with the collaboration of the owner, Pucci Giuffrida, and Alfredo Guglielmini. There is cartura. This collaboration was born when the owner took the Sicilian poetry, principally of Nino Martoglio, an ancient Sicilian poet, and gave it to Cartura. He read the poetry and transformed that into a work of art. It's the mission of Alcantara, because Alcantara means the bridge. There is the bridge that connects wine, art, and poetry. Wine speaks different to people. Poetry speaks different to people. And you have really opened that up, because it's a bridge. It's all these different poetic inspirations that you get, and then place it on the bottle, and then let them speak for themselves. It's way more vibrant. Also the color. Yeah, it's so light. Now, I'll let you taste my favorite white wine that we produce here. This is Annotturna. This is 100% Morello Mascalese, manufactured as white wine. I love this wine. The beautiful thing of this wine for me is that the smells are like red wine. Well, we tasted it last night. It was like the fire from Mount Etna. Not only that freshness and that minerality, but it has this spice, like sparks of fire coming out, and it was all so integrated well in a beautiful finish. I also say you to drink this, because if you are a red wine lover first, if they could speak these wines, what story would they share with us? I think they tell there are children of Etna. Strong, elegant, and sincere. They would tell a story about lava, about wind, and about the fruit. Now that you've witnessed the mystique of Mount Etna, you're going to want to see what lies buried deep in the ancient soils of South Africa. Because if you've never tasted the quiet power of 135 million years of stillness, you might be missing a story only ancient land can tell. We tell that story right here.