Grotte Alte is Arianna's only DOCG wine, in this case Vittoria's most famous, Cerasuolo di Vittoria, a blend of the best native varietals, Nero d'Avola and Frappato. "Grotte Alte" is named for the limestone ridges on which the Occhipinti estate lies, straddling and combining both Mediterranean and mountain influences, with red and sandy clay soils over limestone at about 280 meters. Coming from a selection of older vines, a longer maceration and barrel aging, the Grotte Alte is essentially the "grown-up", appellation-designated version of the "baby" SP68 red IGT wine. 

Trained in a mix of alberello and guyot, the vines average 40 years old and are organically farmed and hand harvested. The fruit is destemmed and fermented with indigenous yeasts with a month-long maceration. The wine is aged for around 30 months in a 25-hectoliter Slavonian oak botte before being bottled unfiltered. Very small production. 

Arianna Occhipinti

Arianna Occhipinti has become a seminal figure for a new generation of wine lovers. Her rise to prominence has been meteoric, and rightfully so: anyone who has ever met Ari will instantly vouch for her charming personality and seemingly boundless energy.

Arianna is the niece of Giusto Occhpinti, whose COS wines are undisputedly amongst the very best of Sicily. In 1998, Giusto invited her to help him out at Vinitaly for four days. Arianna was 16 at the time and knew nothing about wine; the experience was such a good one that she decided to study viticulture and oenology in university. This quickly proved counter-intuitive, since everything she had learned from her uncle (organic viticulture, hand-harvesting, native yeast fermentations) clashed with what she was being taught in school.

Undeterred, Arianna started making wine in 2006 with just one hectare of abandoned vines in the commune of Vittoria. Over the years, she has progressively expanded the estate by replanting 10 hectares of the region's indigenous Frappato and Nero D'Avola in selection massale. A few years later, she was able to start renting 50-year-old Frappato and 45-yea- old Nero D'Avola vines, both independently bottled as single varietal/vineyard cuvées. 

Continually pushing things forward, Arianna built herself a new cellar in 2014, a huge step up from the cramped, chaotic space she used to work in. Besides the obvious advantage of having more space, it has permitted Arianna to start a new regiment of concrete fermentation and aging for both "SP68"'s, which used to to be produced in stainless steel and fiberglass. Some of the tanks are glass lined, some aren't. They are all 2mx2m, and with the way they are set up, the juice can be worked by gravity.