BARRACO
Vignammare 2019
Sicily, Italy
Grillo from a vineyard which sits on a sand dune, right by the Mediterranean. The grapes are picked around a month earlier than his regular Grillo to retain freshness, acidity and verve. They spend just a day on skins, followed by a short élevage in concrete. It was bottled in April with no additions and is a little more open and fruit forward than usual, with delicate flavours of sea salt and lemon zest. Alongside some crudo, it makes for a remarkable apéritif.
Grillo
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
Nino Barraco has been instrumental in rewriting the story of wine in Marsala.
Nino took over his family’s vineyards in 2004 and from the outset he has done things differently, working organically, focussing on the native grapes of his Western Sicily and producing single vineyard wines in the hope of showing others the region’s true potential.
He has spent the past few decades acquiring small parcels and now farms a total of twenty hectares of vines spread along the coast north and south of Marsala. Nino’s work is tireless and he can usually be found driving his beat up Fiat through the dunes to check on his vines. There he works organically and with a great respect for nature.
In the cantina his aim is simply to guide the wine from vineyard to glass. Whilst the majority of his wines are bottled the year after harvest, in his parent’s garage, Nino has embarked on a project to rediscover the Marsala of old. Here, old casks of various sizes hold oxidative wines in various stages of evolution. They are left to evaporate for up to a decade, producing highly concentrated wines of astounding length and complexity.
Nino’s wines possess an uncanny sense of place. Salty, sunkissed and radiant, they are as Nino says, the sea in a glass.