Palmento Costanzo - Mofete, Etna Blanco, Sicily, Italy (2021)

TASTING NOTES

A really elegant wine with a fragrant bouquet rich of citrus fruits and mineral notes, with hints of fresh Mediterranean herbs. The wine is vibrant, and both fresh and savoury on the palate.

Following a manual harvest at the end of September, grapes were softly pressing and fermented in stainless-steel tanks with selected indigenous yeasts. The wine was aged for four months in stainless steel tanks in contact with the fine lees and a further two months in the bottle before release.

These 5 to 30 year-old, bush-trained vines are planted at 2,230 - 2,460 ft. above sea level, on the north-facing side of Mount Etna near Passopisciaro, on volcanic sand and rock. Grapes are painstakingly hand-picked and after a soft pressing and very little skin contact, fermentation occurred in stainless steel tanks. The resulting wine aged in tank for six months.

Located on the northern slopes of Mount Etna in the Santo Spirito area of the town of Passopisciaro, the newly renovated Palmento-Costanzo winery opened in 2011. With over 100 terraced slopes, 14ha in total, rising from 600-800 metres, the vines – some more than a century old – are supported on wooden trellises surrounding the ancient winery. The vineyard and winery have been brought back to life in a meticulous and sensitive restoration based on the principles of bioarchitecture and with attention to local history and a carefully researched revival of traditional production techniques. (Bioarchitecture is defined as a philosophy of building, restructuring and living which aims to establish a balanced, sustainable relationship between the natural environment and construction). The winery follows the traditional winemaking techniques, ‘a caduta’ (top-down), that starts receiving grapes from the roof, continues in the winemaking barrels and finishes in the aging, underground.