Santa Maria La Nave Cover Image

Santa Maria La Nave


A brief history

A heroic and difficult viticulture that aims to preserve ancient vine varieties and centuries-old traditions. At 1100 meters above the sea level, on the North-western slope of the volcano, in one of the highest vineyard in Europe, surrounded by ancient lava flows, after a 15 years long mass selection on ancient ungrafted vines– it’s here that we grow our wonderful vine variety, the Grecanico Dorato. And we use it to make our monovarietal Millesulmare: a mountain and volcanic wine with, at the same time, the fragrance of the sea.
At 800 meters above the sea level, on the South-eastern slope of the volcano, on the incredibly steep side of an ancient crater of Mount Etna, from an ancient vineyard of Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio with a pre-phylloxera heart – here we make our Calmarossa, an authentic Etna Rosso Doc, refined, rich in minerals and with a proud volcanic taste. We are constantly searching for the perfect grape and aiming to minimize the yield per vine, keeping it at about 800 grams for each plant. A limited production of numbered bottles, less than a bottle per vine, which shows our utmost respect for the winemaking tradition on Mount Etna.

Santa Maria La Nave Wines

Featured Wines

Santa Maria La Nave Millesulmare Sicilia DOC Bianco Bottle Preview
Santa Maria La NaveMillesulmare Sicilia DOC Bianco

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.