Nerocapitano is what the locals in Filippo’s village call Frappato. The fruit here comes from twenty year old vines planted over clay and sandstone. The grapes were fermented on the skins for two weeks, before being pressed off to concrete vats to rest. Light, bright, and perfumed with red cherry, blood orange, and wildflowers – served chilled.

Lamoresca

Filippo Rizzo’s farm can be found hidden amongst the rolling hills of Sicily’s rugged interior, the only reference point being the peak of Etna peering over the hills, somewhere in the distance.

Filippo grew up in the closest village to here, San Michele di Ganzaria and having run restaurants overseas, in 2000 he returned home to purchase a small piece of land home to an ancient variety of olives that gives the farm its name. Today he farms a total of five hectares of vines, planted amongst twenty five hectares of olive groves, prickly pear, fruit and almond trees over four hundred metres above sea level. The elevation results in large differences between daytime and nighttime temperatures–a real boon in this typically Mediterranean climate.

The vineyards are planted over clay, sandstone and silex and have been worked organically from the outset. This is a farm where biodiversity is truly cherished and in recent years, Filippo has begun replanting forests of carob, eucalyptus and ginesta next to the vines. Believing that good wine is made in the vines, in the cantina Filippo’s work is decidedly unfussy, resulting in pure, rustic and nourishing wines which speak loudly of Sicily.