The first harvest of the year is poetry and brings us to Sicily and its millenary viticulture

The first harvest of the year is pure poetry, and it takes us to Sicily, “guardian” of one of the most ancient wine traditions of the world, crossroad of people and cultures which make it a real and proper “wine continent”, whose biodiversity in the glass is equal to the extension and the diversity of vineyards, as well as the variety of stories and landscapes that here are interwoven for centuries and represent that wine heritage whose richness, as well as sustainability, makes the wines of the island of absolute quality.
Symbolically, this can only be the background where every year is repeated the most ancient, fascinating and magic ritual of the world of wine, which is concentrated in the cutting of the first bunches but it has many meanings, it represents the end of a year of hard work in Italian vineyards but it is also a new beginning for producers who will finally taste their wines. And, according to tradition and in line with the times, the harvesting of grapes started on July 29 with Pinot Gris in the largest vineyard of Europe which, from the rich and uncontaminated Mediterranean scrub, among expanses of olive trees, dwarf palms, herons and turtles, “dives” in the sea of Menfi, of Cantine Settesoli, the historical Sicilian cooperative reality with 6,000 hectares of rows in Menfishire and “guardian” of 36 cultivars, of which the last to be harvested, in October, will be the native white grapes varieties, from Inzolia to Cataratto, a few steps from Selinunte, the largest Archaeological Park of the Old Continent, where the Sicilian winery has planted a didactic and experimental vineyard with Sicilian “relic vines” that could soon be back in production. October when the harvest of the whole island will end with the Nerello Mascalese on the black sands of Etna, an “environmental mosaic” that changes with every eruption, but also witness over the centuries of agriculture that tells of ancient civilizations and of which wine is among the oldest and most fascinating productions.