Catarratto 2022 - Terre Siciliane I.G.P. - Dei Principi di Spadafora

The noble Spadafora family has been producing wine for decades, but it was only in the 1990’ies that the family decided to begin bottling and marketing of the wine grown on the estate, where previously the wine has been sold in bulk. After testing and tasting the wines produced, the current owner Francesco Spadafora decided in 1993 that the estate should only produce wine from grapes grown on his land. Today the winery has 95 hectares of vineyards around Monreale growing both indigenous and international grapes.

The Catarratto and Inzolia vines for this organic wine grow in the sandy and clay vineyards of Spadafora in contrada Virzì in Monreale to the southwest of Palermo in western Sicily.

The grapes are grown at a height of 300 m above sea level and are subject to a temperature variation of 10-15°C, between day and night which improves the acid sugar balance in the grapes.

Harvesting of the Catarratto and Inzolia grapes, which is done manually and seprarately, starts at around six o'clock in the morning so as to reach a low temperature of around 17°C. The grapes are then destemmed, using a rotating eccentric screw pump, and drop into a heat exchanger, which further lowers the temperature by 10-15°C. Vinification and ageing is with spontaneous fermentation using only natural yeasts without sulfur dioxide, at controlled temperature in cement vats. When the wines were ready they were combined to the final blend and aged for 2 months in the vats and 2 months in the bottles