Colomba Bianca Lavi Carricante 2025
£12.25
The wine
A dry, crisp white with notes of melon, juicy peach and aromatic herbs, running through to a fruity palate with an exceptionally long finish marked by white pepper and sage.
Carricante is the white grape of Etna, grown on volcanic ash at altitudes where few other varieties ripen at all. It is naturally very high in acidity, so much so that it traditionally underwent malolactic conversion the following spring to soften it, and gives wines of pronounced minerality and unusual longevity for a Sicilian white.
The producer
Colomba Bianca
View all Colomba Bianca winesEstablished in 1970, Colomba Bianca is the largest grower cooperative in Sicily and the biggest producer of organic wine in Italy. More than 1,800 hectares are farmed organically, with a further 7,500 planted to indigenous and international varieties across the west of the island.
Sicily is well suited to organic growing for reasons that have nothing to do with fashion. The climate is hot and dry, humidity is low and the sea breezes keep the vineyards ventilated, so the fungal pressures that make organic viticulture difficult in northern Europe are largely absent. What the island has instead is a wealth of native grapes: Grillo and Inzolia for whites, Nero d'Avola for reds, Zibibbo which is Muscat of Alexandria, and Carricante and Nerello Mascalese from the slopes of Etna.
Despite the scale, the stated philosophy is micro-viticulture and micro-winemaking, working parcel by parcel rather than blending by the tank. Head winemaker Mattia Filippi tailors the range across five specialist wineries, and the results are consistently better than the cooperative model usually suggests.
