Santa Maria La Nave Millesulmare Grecanico Dorato 2020
£52.95
The wine
A bright and fine example of Grecanico Dorato with an explosive aromatic entrance. Etnean apple gives way to delicate white peach, pineapple and citrus, with vanilla and white pepper underpinned by distinctive minerality. Dry, balanced and harmonious, with a lovely persistent finish.
Millesulmare means a thousand above the sea, which is roughly the altitude in metres. These are among the highest vineyards in Italy, close to the upper limit of European viticulture, on ungrafted vines over a century old. Grecanico Dorato is known as Garganega in the Veneto and is a quite different grape on Etna's volcanic soils.
The producer
Santa Maria La Nave
View all Santa Maria La Nave winesSanta Maria La Nave is a very small estate on the northern slopes of Etna, founded by Sonia Spadaro Mulone, whose family have owned land on the volcano for generations. Production runs to a few thousand bottles.
The vineyards sit high, at around 900 to 1,100 metres, which is close to the upper limit of viticulture in Europe and makes them among the highest in Italy. The vines are ungrafted, since phylloxera cannot survive in volcanic ash, and some are well over a century old, trained as free-standing alberello bushes on terraces built of black lava stone.
Grecanico Dorato is the estate's speciality, a white grape known as Garganega in the Veneto and quite different on Etna's soils. The reds work Nerello Mascalese with Nerello Cappuccio. Everything is picked by hand, often into November, and the wines have a tension that only altitude on a volcano seems to produce.
