First Salina, now also Vulcano: Tasca d’Almerita invests again on Malvasia and the Aeolian Islands

Putting together 12 hectares of vineyards, on small islands, expressions of heroic viticulture, is an enterprise, especially in an archipelago of small realities, such as the Aeolian Islands. However, this is what Tasca d’Almerita, one of the reference realities of Sicilian wine, has done by expanding its Capofaro project in Salina, dedicated to Malvasia, with the management, in recent times, with long-term rents, of more than 6.5 hectares of vineyards, including 2 on the same Salina, and especially 4.5 in Vulcano. Alberto Tasca comments to WineNews: “A wonderful vineyard, which Paola Lantieri cultivated for a few years, then looked for someone who could manage it with care and passion, and that’s how this relationship with us started”. We will combine this vineyard, which has always been managed with biodynamic methods, to our project of Capofaro, dedicated to Malvasia. We have done our first pruning this year, we have never vinified and we look forward to it. The idea is to make separate vinifications and understand the characteristics of this vineyard of 4.5 hectares and a half, to make the most of it. Also thanks to the agronomist Alessandro Accardi, who followed the vineyard in the past and came to collaborate with us. In addition to this, we have also added another 2 hectares to Salina, and therefore our production of Malvasia will increase significantly. Again, we will vinify all the vineyard particles separately, and we will see the results. We want to enhance the individual vineyards and the different soil and climate exposures, but also the different soils and their interaction with the vine. We are becoming more and more interested in “dry” vinification, as well as in the more classic passito version”. A pearl, that of the Capofaro project dedicated to Malvasia (and where Capofaro Locanda & Malvasia also finds its home on the Relais & Chateaux circuit, ed.), is just one of many from the historic Sicilian winery, which today has over 460 hectares of vine in 5 states. “Each with different peculiarities and with a strong personality, symbolic places of variety, identifying the territories”, from the “mother house”, the Regaleali Estate, to Sclafani Bagni, south of Palermo, to Capofaro, to Salina, from Tascante, on Etna, to Sallier de La Tour, in the Doc Monreale, to Mozia, with the management of the vineyards of the Whitaker Foundation.
A wine archipelago capable of narrating Sicily in many of its many wine-making facets, in a path that has always been linked also to environmental sustainability, with Tasca d’Almerita that in 2010 became the pioneer of the SOStain project, the sustainability protocol for viticulture Sicilian, born in 2010 thanks to the scientific contribution of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Piacenza, and then of “Viva”, the only sustainability and environmental certification program promoted by the Ministry of the Environment.
This is also why the winery will be the protagonist of the meeting “Tutta l’eco del vino - SOStain, il programma per la sostenibilità nella vitivinicoltura siciliana” (11 May at Avvinando Wine Fest, in Palermo), where on stage there will be Giuseppe Tasca d’Almerita, for Tasca d’Almerita, together with two other historical realities and creators of the Renaissance of Sicilian wine, such as Cusumano, with Diego Cusumano, and Planeta, with the oenologist Patricia Toth.