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 are harvested grapes of Syrah, Grillo, Pinot Noir, Nerello Mascalese, Moscato and Perricone, unique for flavors and aromas, happy combination of sea and sun, main features of Sicily and the land of the Madonie.

The farm, named after the San Giaime rural area/hamlet, located on the mountains just outside Gangi, at an altitude of about 900 meters above sea level, has 26 hectares of land partly already destined to arable land (ancient Sicilian grains), olive grove, almond grove, vegetables in greenhouses, and among the latest vineyards planted, also the Carricante, from which in 2026 a new exceptional and rare “Metodo Classico” sparkling wine was born.

All the production of the farm is certified organic in compliance with the cycles of nature, with the primary objective of safeguarding the territory, climate and human health. All activities in the vineyard and in the cellar are conducted limiting as much as possible human intervention. The fermentations are spontaneous and neither filtering nor clarifying are practiced. The desire is to produce wines that, reflecting the varietal diversity, the features of the territory and its origins, can express the true Terroir.