Occhipinti SP68

The Wine... In NYC I met the very talented Sicilian winemaker Arianna Occhipinti, a woman who crafts amazing wines and maybe even-more amazing genre-expanding olive oils. You'll never buy cheap oil again... anyway, there was one major surprise while tasting with Ochipinti, a new wine that I liked as much, possibly more than the Frappato and Nero d'Avola that we've carried from her estate in past vintages. SR68 is named after a road that passes close to the source of the fruit for this new wine. As always Arianna uses grapes indigenous and well-suited to her home town of Vittoria in Southeastern Sicily. After tasting his lively, totally delicious new light red I thanked her, walked to the other end of the room and immediately called 3CUPS wine worker Grant to rave/gloat about the great new wine we would one day have in the shop. Folks, that day has arrived. Come taste the wine we've been dreaming about all summer long. Put down your laundry, turn off the lawn mower, step away from the remote control: this is a red not to be missed.

The Land... A promising new Sicily is emerging. It may seem that the sun-baked region is well-suited to Cali-style bigness, but during my week in Sicily I was surprised by the variety of terrain and climate. Just drive around Etna and you’ll see high-elevation arable land and vines that are as verdant as northern France. Pistachios growing instead of olives. The Baroque hilltop towns of Sicily’s southeastern corner provide elevation and proximity to cooling sea breezes necessary to grow wines with ripeness and acid structure. In short, the Sicily=Hot equation is too simplified to be useful.

The Woman... Arianna Occhipinti’s estate is in the southeastern corner of Sicily near Monti Iblei. She cultivates 5 hectares of vineyard according to biodynamic methods, and leaves 16 hectares of her estate uncultivated to promote a local ecosystem in greater balance. She’s young, but has been making wine for a decade and bottling her current group of wines for four years.