All around a suggestive landscape, like the Jato Valley, that blends into the artistic-historical-religious heritage. From the Monreale cathedral to the orthodox churches, and the rural archaeology of rustic villages, traditions and culture strictly intertwined with the social structure.

The vineyards of the Guccione company are located in this area: a hectare cultivated with Nero D’Avola with the vertical trellised method, three hectares cultivated with Trebbiano with the pergola trained method, two hectares cultivated with Catarratto with the vertical trellised method and finally a 40-year-old piece of land cultivated with Perricone and Nerello Mascalese, with the vertical trellised method.

The centre of the activity is the cellar, but the company garden and a lake on a hill also play an important role. From the lake in fact the Guccione brothers pump the water for the few grapes that are sold.

All the vineyards are cultivated with minimum environmental impact. The two brothers strongly believe in the biodynamic method and they are also members of the association “Renaissance des Appellations”, founded in 2001 by Nicolas Joly. “The company has had an organic certification since 1996 and it is biodynamic since 2005”, said Francesco Guccione, “now we belong to a chain of 160 companies that follow specific rules in the vineyards and in the cellars”.

Amongst the rules on the land, the care of the soil to increase vitality, the prohibition of herbicides; the use of natural fertilizers; the use of natural products instead of pesticides; the prohibition of genetic engineering; the manual selection of the new vines in order to respect the biodiversity of the vineyard and finally a hand-harvest in one or more phases.

In the cellar the fermentation process has to take place in the natural way, no modification of the must and the wine, the prohibition of aromatic or genetically modified yeasts.

The result is that wines improve with time. “The wines that we bottled and sold with some difficulties”, said Francesco Guccione, “are now becoming successful, both with reds and whites”.

The 30 thousand bottles are sold through the Terrazze del Gusto, but also abroad, in Belgium, Germany and Japan in particular.

AZIENDA AGRICOLA GUCCIONE. Address: Contrada Cerasa – Monreale (PA). Telephone: 338 3306583; 347 2993492. Email: guccionecerasa@alice.it; website: www.guccione.eu.

Translated by Chiara Nunnari from John Milton Institute