This post was written and photographed by Sofia Zielinski, who’s majoring in Wine Studies and minoring in Studio Art
Today we visited Mario Paoluzi’s vineyard and winery ‘I Custodi,’ which is located in Sicily, Italy, in the Etna DOC wine region. Mount Etna is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, erupting around 50 times last year. His vineyard is located on the northern side of the volcano with the lowest elevation on his property being 650 meters, which is about 1950 feet above sea level. I Custodi operates very traditionally and naturally, using only chestnut wood poles and string to train the vines, and having no plastic, metal or other foreign materials in the vineyard. Everything is done in an organic way in order to respect the land, the people and the traditions
that have been practiced there for centuries.
The Custodi vineyard has a wide range of vine ages, some newer, being less than 10 years old and some up to 200 years old. Grape vines are of the few fruit producing plants that remain productive after so many years. The older vines produce less fruit than the young, and for this reason Mario has planted much more vines per acre than we would typically see in a younger vineyard in the US. Oregons oldest vines go back only to the 1960s and seem old to us, yet have nothing on these old world vines.
Mario’s vineyards aren’t particularly large but the location of his vines have led to very unique high quality fruit that have allowed him to have a very successful career.
The wines have very distinct characteristics that you will only find in this region. They are very complex in mineralogy given the volcanic soil the vines grow in, and they also have very prominent acidity to them. It’s fascinating just how much wines vary throughout the different areas surrounding mount Etna. A wine grown on the north side can taste completely different than one made with the exact same grapes and vinificarion process that was grown on the westside.
