Description
Located in Sicily’s south-eastern Val di Noto province, the Occhipinti family is synonymous with the Frappato grape that underpins Siciliy’s only DOCG: Cerasuolo di Vittoria. Arianna kicked off in 2004, making wines in a family farmhouse, before transferring, in 2013, to a purpose-built winery, where her 22 hectares of Frappato and Nero d’Avola, along with one-and-a-half hectares of intense Albanello and Zibibbo white grapes, are vinified using cement and Stockinger barrels (Slavonian, German, Austrian oak).
Grotte alte is a territory: the limestone ridges on which Vittoria, Arianna’s hometown stands. But it is also a wine – Cerasuolo Di Vittoria – the result of Frappato (50%) and Nero d’Avola (50%) grapes. Arianna describes it as a mediterranean wine that preserves the taste of the sea and all the air and the Iblei Mountains thermal excursions. This is a harmonious wine which has experienced long ageing. An ambitious, elegant and proud wines.
Tasting Notes
Among the best and most subtle expressions of Cerasuolo di Vittoria, Grotte Alte is not by chance among the few to boast the maximum allowed by the Frappato disciplinary. Dark ruby red, the nose consequently expresses more subtlety and grace than fruit and sweetness, with a Mediterranean and deep outfit. The spicy, herbaceous, vegetable scents accompany the fruity notes, and are counterpointed by marine puffs, myrtle, earth, licorice, tobacco. In the mouth it is of extraordinary elegance, dynamic and taut, enveloping but fine and precise.
