COS

Azienda Agricola COS was founded in 1980 by three childhood friends from Vittoria: Giambattista "Titta" Cilia, Giusto Occhipinti, and Cirino Strano. The name is an acronym of their surnames. They were twenty years old at their first harvest - 1,470 bottles on 5 October 1980 - which made them the youngest commercial winemakers in Italy at the time. Cilia's father provided an old cellar and 3.6 hectares of bush-trained vines in Contrada Bastonaca; the other two were architecture students.

Strano left in 1985 to become a doctor and sold his share; Cilia and Occhipinti, both still trained architects, have run COS ever since. They were instrumental in elevating Cerasuolo di Vittoria to DOCG status - Sicily's only DOCG - and their 2005 release was the first to carry the new designation.

The estate sits in Contrada Bastonaca at around 230 metres - red Pliocene sand (Sicilian terra rossa) over limestone - with the sea close enough to moderate the summer. Today COS farms roughly thirty to forty hectares under vine, plus eighteen hectares of Tonda Iblea olives near Chiaramonte Gulfi. Bush vines, no synthetic chemicals since day one. Biodynamic practice adopted around 2000, organic certification by 2007.

The real pivot came in 2000, when COS launched Pithos - a Cerasuolo di Vittoria fermented and aged in buried terracotta amphora. It was one of the first commercial Italian wines made this way in the modern era, reconnecting Sicilian wine to ancient Mediterranean practice long before amphora became fashionable. In 2007 the estate moved to a new cellar and committed to amphora for all the reds - today there are around 150 buried pithoi on the property, one of the largest such cellars in the world.

The cuvées:

• Pithos Rosso - Nero d'Avola / Frappato, Cerasuolo di Vittoria DOCG, amphora
• Pithos Bianco - 100% Grecanico, destemmed and amphora-aged
• Cerasuolo di Vittoria Classico DOCG
• Frappato - varietal, IGP Terre Siciliane
• Nero di Lupo - 100% Nero d'Avola
• Contrada - single-site Nero d'Avola from Fontane parcel
• Rami - a white blend of Grecanico and Inzolia
• Zibibbo in Pithos, Metodo Classico sparkling rosé, Maldafrica (Bordeaux blend)

COS matters for three reasons: they proved Cerasuolo di Vittoria could be serious terroir wine, they put Sicily back into conversation with ancient Mediterranean winemaking through amphora, and Giusto Occhipinti mentored his niece Arianna Occhipinti, who founded her nearby estate in 2004 directly inspired by what COS had done. Without COS, a lot of what makes contemporary Sicilian wine interesting would look different, or not exist at all.