Dario has always worked on the family farm in one form or another (his heirloom almonds were actually his first love). He changed careers from social worker and part-time farmer to full-time vignaiolo with his first bottling in 2014. He 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 (la sua morte, ‘it’s death,’ as the Italians like to say, is a pairing with raw fish crudo).
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.


