Let’s sail towards the Aeolian Islands until we reach the isle of Salina,
in front of the north-estern coast of Sicily.
This is a volcanic land too, of now extinct volcanoes which shaped the island and gave strength to a high draining soil. The climate in Salina is Mediterranean, and it couldn’t be any different for the island is located on the very centre of the Mediterranean Sea.
Rain is rare and mainly concentrated in Autumn and Winter. The temperatures, high in Spring and Summer, are sensibly lowered during the night due to the cold currents coming down from Mount Fossa delle Felci (961m a.s.l.). Our vineyards are the size of 2 hectares on the eastern side of the island, where they receive the sunlight since the sunrise. Vines are trained with the espalier structure, with a density of 7.500 plants per hectare. The grapes are picked at the end of September and laid on crossed cane racks under the sun.
The Mediterranean Sea and the wind coming from the mountain give birth to wonders: they concentrate the sugar and the flavours naturally present in the grapes, starting a chain of reactions of aromas transformation. This is the drying of the grapes. Then they are destemmed by hand and the drier grapes in which the sugar is crystalized, are added to the fermenting must.
So our Passito Malvasia dele Lipari is made. With the irreplaceable help of a millennia-old igneous land, of the first sun that rises in the Mediterranean sea, of the the wind that blows down from from an almost 1.000m dormant volcano.
