HALARÁ
Bianco 2019
Sicily, Italy
Catarratto from forty year old vines planted over limestone in Marsala’s rugged interior. The grapes were pressed directly to vats for fermentation and a year of rest. Time has rendered a brilliant, golden wine with heady notes of almonds, smoke, sea salt and spice. This is incredibly compact, with a long, lingering finish that bears the mineral imprint of limestone. Sadly we received just a few cases of this wine, which carries a remarkable sense of place.
Catarratto
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.