Terre di Vita

Terre di Vita is a Sicilian range built on the island's two most important native grapes, Grillo for white and Nero d'Avola for red. Libellula, the range name, means dragonfly.

Sicily has been transformed over the past thirty years. For most of the twentieth century it produced enormous volumes of anonymous blending wine shipped north, and the change came when growers recognised what their own varieties could do. Grillo is a nineteenth-century Sicilian crossing of Catarratto and Muscat of Alexandria, created for Marsala and now the island's finest dry white. Nero d'Avola is named for the town in the south-east and gives dark cherry fruit with a firm acidic spine.

The island's hot, dry, ventilated climate makes organic growing far easier than in northern Europe, and Sicily now has more organic vineyard than any other Italian region.