The love for vines and wine are tied in with my childhood spent amongst the vineyards and the “palmenti” (ancient wine vats) near Faro in Sicily, picking Zibibbo, Malvasia, Nocera, Nerello and Calabrese grapes and pressing them in ancient stone “Palmenti”. But also with more personal memories of my father, when he used to take me with him to the cellar and I would see him stroll among the barrels, fill a glass to the brim, and then press it against my lips with a steady hand, wet them slightly, before knocking it back all in one go, his eyes reeling backwards with the pleasure of it.
In the sixties where our vineyards now stand there were other vineyards, in fact the entire Santa Margherita di Pula area was a succession of vineyards for hundreds and hundreds of hectares, all bush trained. There was a local winemaking cooperative where all the members would pool their grapes and one could drink a passable Nuragus and a good red made from indigenous grapes.
When I returned at the beginning of the 90’s together with my wife Heide the place was “a desert”
Abandoned estates, all the vineyards uprooted and the local winemaking cooperative shut. The winegrowers had sought their fortune in other ways, accepting the meagre subsidy the European Union doled out for the eradication of the plants.
In 1996 my wife Heide and I decided, with the help of my son Sliman and a few friends, to plant the first three hectares of vineyard.
We turned to Dott. Donato Lanati, to Prof. Attilio Scienza and to Dott. Francesco Lizio for the best advice we could get. We had decided to make “great wines” no matter the cost.
Now we own 40 hectares of vineyards (next year there will be 50) and we operate according to a strict protocol that our advisors have imposed on us, for the work in the vineyard, the selection of the grapes during harvesting, the vinification and aging, thus ensuring that our wines achieve the utmost quality.
Francesco Siclari