Salvatore Marino 'Turi' 2024 Nero d'Avola Eloro Pachino, Sicily

750ml bottle
12.5% abv

Purple and black fruited, with iodine, cherry, and kalamata olive. Deep yet medium in weight. Lifted & fresh, with a hint of gravelly minerality and low tannin.

95% Nero d’Avola, 5% Pignatello. From vines averaging 25 years old in the Buonivini contrada in the commune of Pachino on the extreme southeastern tip of Sicily (only 7 kilometers from both the Ionian and Mediterranean seas). The farming is organic, including only organic cow manure used occasionally as fertilizer and judicious copper and sulfur treatments. All work is done very much by the Marinos' own hands. The alluvial soils are silty and crumbly, with a lot of clay and limestone; they drain well but dry out easily, though thus far, irrigation hasn't been necessary. The Marinos work the soils superfically three times per year, with a simple, mechanical rototiller. The vines are pruned in alberello and tied securely to posts to withstand the constant, strong marine winds. The vineyard is dotted with olive, pomegranate, almond, various citrus and other trees; the Marinos also raise grain, which they mill into flour for pasta, and carob.

In the cellar, the hand-harvested bunches are destemmed, crushed and fermented spontaneously in stainless steel tanks with temperature control and a gentle maceration lasting about a week. The wine is aged in concrete tank until the spring following the harvest. Sulfur use is minimal. The wine is classified as a DOC whose name pulls from an ancient Greek settlement, Eloro, in the Pachino zone on the nearby coast.  

A 5th generation winemaker, but the first in his family to produce his own wine, Salvatore Marino strives to maintain the equilibrium of biodiversity in the vineyard, working entirely by hand, with green manure as the only additive in the vineyard. Although he owns 5.5 hectares of total land, only 1.5 hectares are under vine—an attempt at maintaining biodiversity. Strictly organic farming, with only bush-trained vines on his property, "in the tradition of his ancestors." Turi is the Sicilian nickname for Marino's first name.