New Additions: Barone di Villagrande - Wines from Mt Etna Sicily
The Barone di Villagrande winemakers are young, fresh in spirit and energy, work together with enthusiasm, with the will to shape something new from the centuries-old roots of an estate on the slopes of Mount Etna.
They cultivate their vineyards on Mount Etna since 1727. Day by day the vines deepen their roots into the fields. With time the wines mature, and so do people on the lands. Their family has been honed by 10 generations on the Etna.
The story of the family is bonded with the Villagrande Contrada.
Barone di Villagrande wrote a fundamental page on the Etna wines history. The story is still going on. They are on the eastern slope of Etna that overlooks Taormina and the Ionian Sea at 700 metres above the sea level.
There, the climate is far from being Sicilian - the climate is Etnean.
Temperatures and precipitations are affected by the volcanic activity and the altitude. In autumn and winter it reaches ten times more rain than the rest of Sicily. In winter and at the beginning of the germination, minimum temperatures can reach values below 0° C being dangerous for the vines.
In summer maximum temperatures are never as high as in the rest of Sicily, and rain is almost absent. This absence of humidity is accentuated by the field’s slope, deeply draining due to its igneous origin.
The huge thermal excursion between day and night is a real blessing for these grapes as it reaches even 30° C. This results in a lower alcohol content compared to the average of Sicilian wines, with a peculiar richness in fixed acidity and extracts.
From Barone di Villagrand, we bring you: