Mortellito “Viarìa" 2022 Moscato Bianco Terre Siciliane

750ml bottle

11.5% abv

Vigna / Vineyard
Ettari / Hectares: 1 hectare.
Quota / Altitude: 40 m / 131 ft.
Suoli / Type of soils: medium texture limestone.
Esposizione / Exposure: South.
Vitigni / Varieties: 100% Moscato di Noto.
Età delle viti / Vine age: 5 years old.
Densità / Planting Density: 7000 vines/hectare.
Allevamento / Trellis system: alberello (bush vines).
Data di vendemmia / Harvest date: beginning of September.
Metodo di vendemmia / Harvest technique: Hand harvested.
Metodo agricolo / Agricultural technique: Organic.
Resa / Yield: 6000 kilograms / hectare.

Cantina / Cellar
Lieviti / Yeasts: Native yeasts.
Fermentazione alcolica / Alcoholic fermentation: 2 days on the skins and after a racking it’s left for another 25 days without any temperature control.
Fermentazione malolattica / Malolactic fermentation: Yes.
Affinamento / Élevage: 6 months in stainless steel tanks.
Chiarificazione, filtrazione / Clarification, filtration: 10 micron paper filters.
Zolfo / Sulphur: 30 / 40 mg/L total, 20 / 30 mg/L free.
Altri prodotti aggiunti? / Other products added?: None.
Produzione annua / Annual production: 100 cases.

Mortellito [MORT-el-li-to] in Val di Noto*, in the corner of Sicily that lies at the same latitudes as North Africa’s arid desert climate. Its vineyards are a few kilometers from the coast, with groves of ancient olive and almond trees shielding the wind from the sea. Abandoned and working fishing ports dot the landscape.

Owner Dario Serrentino has always enjoyed the contrasts of this coastal growing area, which he calls ‘a desert next to the beach.’ Over the years, lucky for us, he’s learned to coax extremely elegant wines from this receding coast of limestone which, he says, has ‘the magic to produce wines with tension, freshness, and complex salinity.’

In Dario’s best vintages, his rosso and bianco wines have a tapering, svelte finish, cool and salt-dusted. Drinking them is akin to a dive into the nearby Ionian sea on a hot summer day.

Dario has always worked on the family farm in one form or another (his heirloom almonds were actually his first love). He changed careers from social worker and part-time farmer to full-time vignaiolo with his first bottling in 2014.

He works only with native grapes, including an herbal Frappato, and a spicy-sour bush vine Nero d’Avola. His whites are acid-driven and aspirin-chalky in texture: the Grillo often has a nose of toasted nuts and citrus rind, the Moscato di Alessandria is floral and herbal (la sua morte, ‘it’s death,’ as the Italians like to say, is a pairing with raw fish crudo).

There’s never been any chemical interventions in the vineyards, and there’s an intentional hands-off approach in the cellar, with a minimum of sulphur added at bottling. Avoiding the entrapments of the glou-glou or overwrought luxury style, Dario is part of a very small contingent of producers in Sicily producing fine and natural wines, or as Dario poetically likes to say: mare e terra in vino.

* Val, confusingly, doesn’t translate as ‘valley’ in this instance; instead it most likely come from the Arab or Latin meaning, ‘Governor’ of Noto or ‘Territory’ of Noto.