Arianna Occhipinti Frappato 2021
$59.99

Arianna Occhipinti Frappato 2021

At 36, Superstar Arianna Occhipinnti is already on her 19th vintage. Coming from a winemaking family (COS is her uncle), she is almost singlehandedly responsible for Sicily’s wine resurgence. This is her most famous wine. Arianna started at age 16 in her uncle’s cellar--he being the proprietor of Vittoria's most famous winery, COS--and loved it, enough to go to oenology school and to jump right into her own production. She began with a mere one hectare of abandoned vines attached to a family vacation house. Though university imparted technical knowledge of a sort, the main influence on her ways in vineyard and cellar was in fact her uncle, who raised his wines as well as his niece on organic viticulture, harvest by hand and native-yeast fermentations, none of which is typical of Sicily's bulk-driven wine production. In Arianna's own words: "Not irrigating, harvesting late and not using fertilizers are the secret to making more elegant wines in the area. The freshness and minerality in my wines come from the subsoils. Any wine made from young vines or chemically grown vines feeding only off of the top soil will have the cooked, hot characteristics people associate with wine from warm regions."