Mortellito

Owner Dario Serrentino has always enjoyed the contrasts of this coastal growing area, which he calls "a desert next to the beach". Over the years, he’s learned to coax extremely elegant wines from this receding coast of limestone, which, he says, is "the magic to produce wines with tension, freshness, and complex salinity". In Dario’s best vintages, his red and white wines have a tapering svelte finish, cool and salt dusted. Drinking them is akin to a dive into the nearby Ionian Sea on a hot summer day.

History

Passionate winemaker

Dario has always been involved in the family farm in various capacities. He transitioned from a career as a social worker and part-time farmer to becoming a full-time vignaiolo, with his first bottling in 2014. Dario works only with native grapes, including an herbal Frappato, and a spicy-sour bush vine Nero d’Avola. His whites are acid-driven and aspirin-chalky in texture: the Grillo often has a nose of grilled nuts and citrus rinds, the Moscato di Alessandria is floral and herbal.

Philosophy

A paying hands-off approach

There’s never been any chemical interventions in the vineyards, and there’s an intentional hands-off approach in the cellar, with a minimum of sulphur added at bottling. Avoiding the entrapments of the Glou-Glou or overwrought luxury style, Dario is part of a very small contingent of producers in Sicily producing fine and natural wines, or as Dario poetically likes to say: mare e terra in vino.