Arianna Occhipinti

Vittoria, in the south-east corner of Sicily inside the Cerasuolo di Vittoria DOCG. Arianna's first vintage was 2004, age 22, from a single hectare of abandoned vines her uncle Giusto Occhipinti of COS had let her work. 2023 was her twentieth vintage.

The estate now runs to roughly 30 hectares of vine, alongside olives, Tumminia wheat, legumes and citrus - farmed biodynamically since 2009, un-irrigated, cover-cropped with fava beans and oats. The planted varieties are the local set: Frappato and Nero d'Avola for the reds, Albanello, Zibibbo and a newer plot of Grillo at altitude in Chiaramonte Gulfi for the whites.

The range goes from SP68 - a Frappato-led field blend named after the provincial road past her cellar - up to Il Frappato, Siccagno (un-irrigated old-vine Nero d'Avola), the single-contrada Bombolieri (Frappato), and Grotte Alte, a 50/50 Frappato/Nero d'Avola Cerasuolo aged around 32 months in a 25-hectolitre Slavonian oak botte and her only DOCG-labelled wine. Louis/Dressner discovered her at an Italian wine fair in 2006 and has imported her to the US since.

She has always been uneasy with "natural wine" as a flag - the line that circulates is "my goal is not to make natural wine, working this way is a process to make good wine." The wines bear that out: they are not about the label, they are about what Frappato does when you let it grow up without irrigation or cosmetics.