Arianna Occhipinti was born in Marsala and grew up in Vittoria. Her uncle Giusto, who founded the COS winery, took her to the Vinitaly wine fair when she was 17, and she was fascinated. She studied grape growing and winemaking at the University of Milan, then visited wineries around Europe. After that she came back to Sicily to make wine of her own. In 2004 she rented one hectare of Nero d'Avola and Frappato, about the size of 1.4 football pitches, next to the old cellar at Fossa di Lupo. Her first 2,000 bottles of each went on sale in 2005 and sold out at once.
Her ideas were noticed early. In 2003, before her first harvest, the critic Luigi Veronelli printed a letter she wrote in praise of the land. In 2012 an article by Eric Asimov in the New York Times made her a leading name in natural wine outside Italy. A year later she told her story in a book, Natural Woman. Today the estate makes about 160,000 bottles a year and sells them in 60 countries.
That first vineyard lies beside the SP68, a country road the estate calls the oldest wine road on record. It was once a narrow stone track. Three thousand years ago it linked Gela and Kamarina, and for generations farmers carried their wine along it to the coast. Over the years she brought small vineyards back to life in other districts. Among them are Bombolieri, Pettineo, Bastonaca, Santa Teresa, Serra d'Elia and Santa Margherita, up in the hills at Chiaramonte Gulfi. Under the red sand of Vittoria lie limestone, tuff and chalk, and she tries to let them show in the glass.
In the vineyard she follows biodynamic methods and uses no synthetic chemicals. The soil is worked by hand, beans and oats are sown in the vineyards and turned into the soil in spring, and the grapes are picked by hand. The estate's own wine sheets say the vineyards are certified organic. Her cellar at Bombolieri was built in 2013. There the wines ferment with the wild yeasts on the grapes, mostly in concrete vats, with no new oak and very little sulphur. Wine is only part of the farm. She also grows Tumminia, an old Sicilian wheat, with pears, citrus and a large kitchen garden. Her family has made olive oil since the 1600s.
All her wines come from local grapes: Frappato, Nero d'Avola, Grillo, Albanello and Zibibbo. SP68 Rosso and SP68 Bianco take their name from the road. Il Frappato and Siccagno, her pure Nero d'Avola, age in large Austrian oak casks. Grotte Alte, her Cerasuolo di Vittoria DOCG, spends four years in large French oak casks. In 2016 she began making Frappato from single districts: PT from Pettineo, FL from Fossa di Lupo and BB from Bombolieri. Later came SM, a Grillo from Santa Margherita. Each is named after its contrada. The mix of sand and limestone gives fruit and silkiness on one side, and acidity and energy on the other. Serracalcara is a Grillo from a rocky ridge in Vittoria, and Passonero is a passito of sun-dried Nero d'Avola.
Sicily
Est. 2004 
10 wines 
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