Occhipinti
One of Italy's most sought-after organic/biodynamic producers, Arianna Occhipinti produces exceptional Sicilian natural wines made with native grapes like Frappato and Albanello in the Cerasuolo di Vittoria DOCG.
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 so meaningful that she decided to study viticulture and oenology in university. This endeavor quickly proved to be counter-intuitive, since everything she had learned from her uncle (organic viticulture, hand-harvesting, native yeast fermentations) contradicted what she was being taught in school.
Following her own path, Arianna started making her own wine 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 leasing 50 year old Frappato and 45 year old Nero D'Avola vines, both independently bottled as single varietal/vineyard cuvées. In 2012, she acquired an additional eight hectares of 19 year-old vines, and two years later she built herself a new cellar, a big step up from the cramped, chaotic space she had been working in. Besides the obvious advantage of having more room, it permitted Arianna to start a new system of concrete fermentation and aging for both Occhipinti wines and her flagship "SP68" wines. Today, she has 22 hectares which sit in southern Sicily, just off County Road SP68. She works primarily with two of Sicily’s main native grapes, Frappato and Nero d’Avola, which are typically blended to create Cerasuolo, though she bottles them on their own as well. She also works with Zibibbo (Moscato di Alessandria) and Alabanello for her skin-contact white wines. With each of her wines, you get a sense of who Arianna is and the distinct place in which they were grown.
