OUR ROOTS

In these isolated, impervious and wild areas, with particular soil and climatic conditions, are born and grown wines, called “heroic”, free from any environmental contamination.

Located in the Sicilian hinterland, between the counties of Palermo and Enna, “Alte Madonie” is an area characterized by the presence of farms where, for tradition and respect of the cycles of nature, freed fields cereals and vegetables, oil and seasonal fruit, grow without herbicides use, fertilizers and chemical treatments, determining a healthy territory that transfers excellent qualities to every products of its land.

Bees, grazing cows and sheep, bring back to a “past world”, which still guarantees long life to the local people. Madonie, in fact, could be configured as the “Sixth Blue Zone” of the planet, that includes Okinawa in Japan, Loma Linda in California, Nicoya in Costa Rica, Icaria in Greece and the province of Nuoro in Sardinia in its prestigious long-lived club.

Ogni cani è liuni na sò casa.

Elected “Most Beautiful Village in Italy 2014” and “Jewel Town of Italy 2012”, Gangi is a Palermitan town of seven thousand people in “Alte Madonie”. Located in the Siclily western hinterland, 1.000 meters above sea level, it is not far, as the crow flies, from the Etna Volcano on the east and the Mediterranean Sea on the north, both visible on the horizon. It is still a little known place, far from the mass tourism routes.

In this context, Tenuta San Giaime is an active part of Slow Food (ndr. Slow Food is a global, grassroots organization, founded in 1989 to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions, counteract the rise of fast life and combat people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from and how our food choices affect the world around us.) and, since 2015, has been included in the MTV (Movimento Turismo del Vino, a non-profit association that promote the wine tourism hospitality) that allows passionate wine tourists to discover this pearl set in the Sicilian mountains.

“It’s in the family estate that I spent every summer, starting to learn the Syrah vineyards from an early age, which my grandfather Gaetano cultivated with much passion but a little less technique.”

Entrepreneur, born in 1984, born and raised in Milan, with family from Gangi.

In 2006, with his father Salvatore, his uncle Franco Mastrandrea and the oenologist Gianfranco Cordero, he decided to “get his hands dirty” bringing together ideas, passion, time and resources to reinvigorate bonds with Gangi and the estate, starting from what it had always been done on that land, but never rightly valued: wine!

The first highland vines were replanted and reorganized, following the organic farming dictates and in total absence of chemical products, to wait the first 1.000 bottles of Syrah in 2012… from which it all began!

7 hectares of vineyard from which Syrah, Grillo, Pinot Noir and Nerello Mascalese grapes, unique in flavors and aromas, a happy union between sea and sun, the main characteristics of Sicily and the almost primordial land of Madonie, are harvested.

The farm has 26 hectares of land, partly already allocated to arable lands (ancient Sicilian grains), olive groves, greenhouse vegetables and, among the already planted vineyards, even Carricante, Zibibbo and Perricone, from which in the coming years new labels will come.

All of the production is certified as organic, respecting the cycles of nature, with the primary objective of the territory, the clima and human health safeguarde. All the activities in vineyard and in cellar are conducted limiting human intervention as much as possible. The fermentations are spontaneous and neither filtering nor clarification are practiced. The desire is producing wines which can express the true Terroir of these places, reflecting the varietal diversity, the territory characteristics and its origins.