Too often, currently, we are used to talking about Sicilian wines thinking almost exclusively about Etna with its Nerello, Carricante and Minnella. In fact, Sicily is definitely much more, as Giambattista Cilia, Cirino Strano and Giusto Occhipinti knew as early as 1980, when they bought an old cellar, with a plot of about three and a half hectares, in the area of Vittoria (Ragusa), and established COS winery.
The area in question was (and is still today) characterized by a typically Mediterranean climate, with warm temperatures and great fertility; pedoclimatic conditions known for over three millennia. Every civilization that has passed there has left its legacy to the next one, and this has pushed the three owners to undertake a path of respect and research, accompanied by a holistic view of the vine-nature-man microcosm which led to the adoption of biodynamic practices.
Again for the same reason, also in the cellar, winemaking practices are inspired by a productive methodology that accompanies the transformation of grapes into wine, without any “change”, as neutral as possible. In this direction, finally, goes the choice to definitively abandon, in 2007, the wood aging containers, which leave their own aromas and tastes in wines, replacing them with vitrified concrete tanks and clay jars.
Nero di Lupo, for example, a Nero d’Avola coming from vineyards at 250 meters above sea level on Pliocene origin calcareous sands, after spontaneous fermentation on the skins (by means of indigenous yeasts) ages for over a year in the above-mentioned tanks.
The 2018 vintage presents a wine that is light years away from the average idea of Nero d’Avola wines. The alcohol content, to start with, is 11,5° and this characteristic is also reflected in the view of a bright and pale ruby color, with some purple streaks. Even the scents are unsettling: they start with cherry, laurel, Mediterranean scrub and violet, followed by pulp of prickly pear, wet white pebbles, and watermelon, with echoes of young leather. The palate is immediately flooded with a really unusual freshness for this grape, with a remarkable finesse tannic component in which are set pleasant retro-olfactory scents of green branch of cinchona and tamarind that accompany the sip up to a discreet length closure.
Rating: 88/100
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