Cipolla Occhio di Sale

Profile & Story

Giuseppe Cipolla farms at Contrada Passofonduto near Campofranco, inland from Agrigento on the edge of Caltanissetta province, where he began planting vines in 2015 on family land that had been in grain, olives, fruit and legumes. Of sixteen hectares only about 1.5 are under vine, on terraces built by hand into steep rocky hillsides of gypsum, halite and calcareous sulphur laid down in the Messinian salt crisis, a landscape of former rock-salt and sulphur mines. Farming is organic though uncertified, and the vines are mostly alberello grown from massale selections. Occhio di Sale is assembled from several separate vinifications of native white and red grapes led by Nero d'Avola, most of it direct-pressed with a small portion macerated on skins overnight, then fermented and raised in stainless steel at 11.5% alcohol.