Randazzo, October 12th 2010
(N.T. Starting last year, I Vigneri has refurbished an old Palmento, the ancient wine press that uses levered perpetual motion to press the fruit in a lava-stone trough. It's been illegal to use them for a number of years due to a ban by the European Union.)
In the first few days of October, the same as in every year, there is something different in the air, in the doing, in speaking, in everyday tasks, a certain excitement, trepidation. It’s the prelude to the harvest that puts everyone in a state of preoccupation mixed with joy. It is understood that the littlest thing can turn a year’s work worthless. A year that would be lost. The clouds which around here at this time are gray, full of water, pass above our noses menacing us with their usual smell. You look at them seemingly indifferent, but your eyes are watching for the warning sign to see the clouds envelope the top of the Mountain (Etna). You hope for a wind to scatter them. Ultimately nothing happens... Muntagna dici ca nu gniovi…na paura ("Etna says it will not rain, don't worry") my grandfather used to say.
In the evening, around the table in the warmth of the family, we listened to our grandfather. His stories, mildly frightening for children, fascinated us. My grandfather knew a lot of stories. On one of those evenings, gathered around the fire waiting for the harvest, with an expression as if confiding a secret, or a great truth, he said, Carusi, riurdativillo sempri u vinu si fa ca racina, sulu ca racina! ("Always keep in mind it’s the grapes that make a wine, only the grapes"). This never ceased to baffle me because obviously I knew that wine was made from grapes.
I spent a lot of years harvesting and this thought often returned to mind and in the age of biotechnical capacity, it seemed, ever-present. In this age of super-yeasts and super-enzymes that extract everything you find (and even some you don’t) in a grape and that promise to make a mediocre wine of supposed high quality, my grandfather’s voice speaks to me... riurdativillo sempri u vinu si fa ca racina.
The 2010 harvest is finished.
Again this year, through the efforts of man and the help of God, we were able to harvest and make wine from our precious fruit.
The Mountain (Etna), with its strength, with its unique climate and terrain gave us a real wine: not a enologist’s wine, not a winemaker’s wine, but a real wine expressing the terroir of Etna and its viticultural heritage.
We wanted, against those who impose absurd legislation, to continue producing our wine like it has been done for 2000 years on Etna with our vines in alberello and our Palmenti, using only our strength, our passion, our sacrifice and only those correct innovations that respect nature.
The end result is always a unique wine with a strong personality, a child of Etna, of the traditional grape varieties of the region, of our men and women of Etna.
We want our wine, made in the volcanic stone, to pass on the force of the volcano, the minerality of its soil and the passion and humanity of its people. We want our wine to be an ETNA WINE, not just a wine made on Etna.
