- Reference #:
- 9276
- Strength
- 12.5 ABV
- Bottles per Case
- 1 bottles
- Grapes
- Frappato, Nero d'Avola
- Organic
- Yes
- Biodynamic
- No
- Vegan
- No
- Vegetarian
- Yes
- Sparkling
- No
Occhipinti SP68 Rosso 150cl 2016
12.5% abv
SP68 is a road but it is also a young wine. Cool and pleasant, with a delicate taste that it brings the flavour of the sun and the freshness of this land.
This is the estate’s classic blend of the region – although somewaht turned on its head from the usual being 70% Frappato & 30% Nero d’Avola rather than the other way around.After manual harvest the organically grown grapes are ferment with indigenous yeasts for around 15 days on the skins before aging in concrete fro 6 months.
One of the bright new stars of Sicily, if not Italy, is Arianna Occhipinti, who made her first vintage aged just 21 in 2004. She was introduced to wine by her uncle, Giusto Occhipinti, co-owner of the neighbouring COS winery, and studied oenology in Milan where she kicked against the technical, lab-based approach. She is a natural winemaker by instinct, working hard in her Fossa di Lupo farm planted with 10ha of Frappato and Nero d’Avola to produce tip-top grapes and then allowing nature to finish the job with the minimum of intervention.
A range of blends and mono-varietal wines are produced, but the aim is always to extract the purest expression of the land in this little corner of Sicily. In a tiny way each bottle helps to chip away at the ripe, sun-drenched image of Sicilian wine. Green manure, massal selection, tilling by hand and pied de cuvee are all part of the natural techniques favoured by Arianna – as she herslf puts it so eloquently – “We do not inherit the land from our ancestors; we borrow It from our children.” I love this phrase by Saint-Exupery.”
