Santa Maria La Nave

A volcanic white wine, made with local grapes grown at heroic altitude. At 1100 meters above sea level, in the heart of hundreds of years old lava flows and pristine areas in an untamed landscape, from wonderful vines of Grecanico Dorato, in our Casa Decima vineyard, it’s here that our Millesulmare is born, a wine with an extraordinary mineral content and a refined scent of mountain and sea. On the impervious North-western slope of Mount Etna, in one of the vineyard at the highest altitude in Europe, the passing of centuries has created the perfect context where this charming local vine variety can be grown, as the ancient winemakers did for entire generations, with passion and true efforts. Even if it’s characterized by a huge lava structure, this heroic place is rich of small orchards and verdant woods. This is the landscape surrounding our vineyard, Casa Decima at Contrada Nave, which never ceases to let us perceive its timeless beauty and where man keeps coming to terms with nature, in a mutual exchange of love and trust. The result of a mass selection that has taken more than fifteen years, Millesulmare is a genuine and volcanic wine, the true symbol of an ancient and mystic terroir, the expression of its wonderful mineral and savoury nuances. A wine with a deeply-rooted identity, produced according to the Etnean winemaking tradition and showing a deep attention to the grapes, whose scents and taste are the symbol of an entire area and leave speechless those who drink it, thanks to the important thermic fluctuations that only heroic vineyards at extreme altitudes can endure. A project which we have been working on since 2004, inspired by our love and our deep desire to preserve and enhance these ancient vine varieties and a territory of such extraordinary beauty.

From an ancient vineyard on volcanic sand, on the steep slope of the crater Mount Ilice, a wonderful side crater on the South-eastern slope of Mount Etna. It’s here that our Calmarossa comes to life. This beautiful mountain overlooks the Ionian Sea and is characterized by an extreme declivity and its fine black sand and volcanic ashes. The soil is rich in minerals that come from the original and primordial depths of our planet, making it the perfect place to grow vines and fruit trees. Here, for entire centuries, many generations of winemakers followed one another, tending and managing these extreme vineyards and working and striving with passion. They were constantly rewarded by Mother Nature with genuine wines, examples of an entirely volcanic terroir. During the last 50 years this ancient pre-phylloxera vineyard, at the altitude of 800 meters above sea level, has been grown with true love and intimate devotion according to a biodynamic regime, by Don Alfio, a passionate and upstanding farmer, a great expert of Mount Etna. We inherited this incredible biodiversity “sanctuary” from him: rare fruit trees and ancient bush-trained local vine varieties that we want to bring back to their original splendour, in order to preserve them and pass them on to future generations. Our Calmarossa has been forged by centuries of ancient Etnean winemaking tradition: a strong and stubborn wine, elegant at the same time, just like the ancient vines from which it comes from. A volcanic wine, with a ruby red colour, which makes one think about the lava itself, about its intensity and fierceness – but that, thanks to its Etnean aroma, can bring peace and soothe one’s soul at every sip. Just as when you get to see a wonderful sunset from peak of the volcano, watching the sea where the mountain rises up or the pure white snow that covers it during winter. An evocative wine, which narrates our tradition and has the very same scent of Mount Etna.