Marco De Bartoli 'Integer' Sicilia Grillo 2021

Country: Italy

Region: Sicily

Type: Orange Wine

Grape: Grillo

Marco di Bartoli comes from a Marsala-producing family. He wandered for a while, became a race car driver among other things, but found his way back to the family business, intent on changing up the status quo – which in his region was pretty industrial. He moved all farming to organics, insisted on hand harvesting in a machine-driven wine region, worked only with estate-grown grapes and native yeast fermentations. Marco passed a few years back, but his adult children Renato, Sebastiano and Giuseppina are continuing the good work started by their papa.

The Integer wines are the De Bartolis' entry into the world of skin contact wines made exclusively from local varieties and aged in clay amphorae. Organic farming. After a manual selection of the indigenous grapes, the clusters are gently destemmed, to start a maceration that lasts for all the fermentation process, with wild yeasts, without any pumping over and punching down, in open vats and clay amphoras, and with no direct control on temperature. After the racking, the wine ages in the same barrels and amphoras, on the lees for approximately a year, at room temperature. The wine is bottled without filtering and fining, as it gets clear through natural decanting. No added sulfur.

Aromatic, floral and minerally, this wine is textured and savory, but with a core of fruit and bright acidity.