Il torchio manuale è indispensabile per gestire piccole masse: noi lo usiamo per svinare Ammàno e i pied-de-cuve di lieviti in fermentazione

Come nasce Ammàno, un vino speciale perché fatto interamente a mano e senza uso di tecnologie moderne, dall'uva all'etichetta

The story of how Ammàno came to be: a special wine made entirely by hand, without modern technology, from the grapes to the label

I vini bianchi macerati sono una tipologia di vini - prodotti con uve bianche - molto diversa dai vini bianchi “moderni”, a partire dal colore intenso, spesso tendente all'"orange"

Orange wines are made from white grapes and are very different from “modern” white wines, starting with their deep and intense color

Il mondo del vino in Italia è sessista? Molti dicono di no, anche se un'indagine dell'Associazione Nazionale Le Donne del Vino dimostra il contrario. E i piccoli episodi di ogni giorno lo confermano

Sono molto felice che anche quest'anno Slow Wine abbia riconfermato La Chiocciola a Cantine Barbera.

E' una riconferma che mi rende orgogliosa sia per il riconoscimento al lavoro che stiamo facendo in azienda, sia perché è l'unica assegnata a Menfi ed alla provincia di Agrigento.

La Chiocciola non è solo il premio ad un buon vino, ma al modo in cui un'azienda interpreta i valori della filosofia di Slow Food, sintetizzata nei tre concetti di Buono, Pulito e Giusto: produzioni di qualità nel rispetto degli ecosistemi e delle persone che ci lavorano.

In Sicilia, soltanto 16 cantine hanno ricevuto questo riconoscimento. Sono vignaioli profondamente innamorati delle proprie vigne, che rispettano l'uva e la trasformano con grande attenzione e delicatezza, trasmettendo attraverso i propri vini il valore del territorio e della biodiversità che contribuiscono a tutelare.

Quasi tutti sono certificati biologici, alcuni - tra cui noi - hanno anche la certificazione biodinamica. 

Questo è davvero molto importante. Abbiamo appena superato una vendemmia, la 2024, in cui gli effetti del cambiamento climatico si sono fatti sentire in tutta la loro drammaticità: 8 mesi senza una goccia di pioggia, la siccità più terribile che io abbia mai visto in 25 anni, hanno messo a dura prova la resistenza del sistema agricolo in Sicilia, e ne hanno evidenziato la fragilità. Il fatto che una Guida enologica di rilievo internazionale riconosca il valore di chi pratica una viticoltura rispettosa dell'ambiente nel quale tutti noi viviamo rappresenta uno stimolo ad impegnarci sempre di più nella tutela dei nostri territori, diffondendo cultura e consapevolezza.

Insieme alla Chiocciola c'è anche la segnalazione di un Vino Slow, che quest'anno è Ammàno #11, vino materico e dal frutto croccante, con un'anima citrino-salata ed una beva appagante.

In Guida insieme ad altri 4 vini:

• Ciàtu 2021: macchia mediterranea e frutto fresco, sorso pieno di grinta e tessitura acida e sensazioni metalliche che distendono il frutto, rendendolo di grande piacevolezza;
• Tivitti 2023: naso intenso con cenni di pesca e albicocca; sorso leggero e fragrante, intriso di sensazioni sapide;
• Microcosmo 2019: affilato, metallico, contrastato;
• Coda della Foce 2016: setoso, vegetale espressivo.

Come ho cominciato a fare quello che ancora faccio, senza filtri

How I started doing what I still do today

The title might sound a bit over the top, but honestly, there really is a before Ammàno and an after Ammàno in my life as a winemaker.
And tonight, as I am finished with my twelfth vintage, I think I finally realise just how much this wine has changed me.

The first vintage of Ammàno was 2013, a hot, dry year that seemed exceptional back then - today, it feels almost like the norm. I’d planted this little patch of Zibibbo, but the young vines were slow to take off. They barely grew and produced almost nothing, just a few bunches of grapes to eat. Many of the young vines kept sending out shoots below the graft, and I stubbornly kept grafting them again and filling in the gaps.

In 2013, I finally managed to harvest about 500 kilos of beautiful grapes: fragrant, sweet, crunchy, and completely unfazed by the scorching heat that August.

So, what was I going to do with such a tiny amount of grapes? They’d have disappeared in the press.

Easy. I’d make the wine separately, put it in a little tub, and see what happened. If I ended up throwing it away, so what? It was just an experiment.

I left the grapes in their crates and destemmed them by hand, a little at a time. Some bits of stem were left behind. Never mind. Fermentation started on its own. The skins were tough, the cap was compact, and I had to throw my whole 54 kilos into punching it down. Every time I finished, my arms were killing me and there was half a metre of foam on top. But the smell! Oh, that smell.

Fermentation was over almost as quickly as it had started. Well, it was 30°C in the cellar, and that little tub wasn’t refrigerated.

Now I had to get the skins out somehow.

My father had an old wooden press that could handle about 20 kilos at a time. He’d used it back when we were still working out of the garage. I dug it out, sanitised it, and used it to press the Zibibbo skins. I racked the wine with a rubber hose and a bagnèra. As if I was going to set up a pump for less than four hectolitres!

A couple of months later, I tasted it.

Back then, I NEVER tasted wine before it had finished doing whatever it needed to do on its own. It made me anxious. The wine seemed strange, and it tasted of things I couldn’t make sense of. Then I grew up a bit, too. I realised that young wine is like a little kid: it screams, runs around, gets dirty playing in the garden, picks its nose, and drives you absolutely mad. These days, I know what young wine is like. And most of the time, I can handle it without getting anxious.

So I tasted it. And what I tasted was something I’d never tasted before.

Energy. Sea. Sicily. Menfi.

The feeling of sunburnt skin after a day at the beach, salt from the Mediterranean, the golden light of sunset. Wild mint, seashells, the hot scirocco wind. And then, month after month, the wine kept changing. First came the broom flowers, then the black bees honey.

It took me a while to understand that it wasn’t just the grapes giving me all this. It was also everything I hadn’t done: no press, no pumps, no fridge, no filtration, no oenological additives, no electricity. No need to control every little thing. It wasn’t me trying to make wine, but the wine finding its own way.

Fast-forward to today, 2024.

Over these ten years, Ammàno has taught me to take a step back. To stop trying to tell the wine what to do and let it set the pace instead. To pay attention to the vineyard, to understand the grapes, how tough and stubborn they are, how determined they are to survive and do the best they can, even in the hardest years.

I owe this wine so much of the winemaker I’ve become: my choice to farm more gently and with greater respect for the land, my journey into biodynamics, and my stubborn determination to keep going down a road that’s incredibly hard work, but also immensely rewarding.

Today, Ammàno is a wine I can count on. First of all, I know what it means to me. But it means something to plenty of other people, too.

It’s one of the wines that has brought me some of the recognition I care about most, including the Chiocciola from Slow Wine. That one really matters to me.

But the thing that matters most is knowing that Ammàno means something to the people who drink it, too.

And honestly, there’s no better recognition than that.