Occhipinti SP68 Rosso

Occhipinti SP68 Rosso has hints of flowers, leather, smoke, spice and herbs with wafts of liquorice, earth and mandarin rind.

Occhipinti SP68 Rosso blend of Nero d’Avola and Frappato is slightly purple/red in the glass showing aromas of wild cherries, plum and mulberry with just a touch of raspberry lift.

In the mouth the initial attack of fruit is awash with wild cherry sheathed in tobacco leaf with supporting fruit flavours of dark plum and blackberry.

Occhipinti SP68 Rosso is a very pretty wine on the palate with violet-like floral flicks across the leather and spice backdrop with hints of roasted meats, citrus rind and scattered herbs.

It’s delicious and lively with a nice, lingering finish set upon a plinth of ripe, fine grained gravelly tannins.

The SP68 is the name of the main road that passes near to Arianna‘s home town of Vittoria….it lies in the far south of Sicily just to the west of Ragusa.

It is here that she has been making wine for the past ten years under the tutelage of her uncle, Giusto Occhipinti who owns and runs the famous COS estate.

All the vineyards are worked using biodynamic principals and the work in the cellar is measured, not pushing the wine in any way, letting it find its own space.

Natural yeasts, no temperature control, no fining or filtration, and minimal SO2 at bottling. agricolaocchipinti.it

Arianna Occhipinti says that her love for wine was sparked when at the age of 16 she went with her uncle (Giusto Occhipinti of COS) to Vinitaly, the large wine show in Verona.

It prompted her to study oenology at university in Milan. There, she was distressed to find the emphasis on chemistry and laboratory work, at odds with the more natural winemaking she had learned from her uncle.

This wasn’t what had prompted her to fall in love with wine. For her, it was about farming: the vines.

In her early 20s, she began making wines in her home area of Vittoria, Sicily. Frappato amazed her: a grape capable of making floral, elegant reds, so different from the big, ripe overpowering Nero d’Avolas that had so far defined Sicilian wine.

She decided her style would be one of finesse and elegance and perfume over power. Her first vintage (2004) was released in 2006 when she was just 24. At the time she had just one hectare of vines.

In 2011 she purchased a 23 hectare farm with 7 hectares of vines, as well as other crops. It had been farmed organically for 15 years.

Currently, her vine holdings are 22 hectares of Nero d’Avola and Frappato, and a hectare and a half of white grapes (Albanello and Zibbibo ).

These are exemplary wines, naturally made, and showing finesse and interest.

Occhipinti SP68 Rosso - Hay Wines