Arianna Occhipinti

Hands-on and committed, Arianna Occhipinti is a strong female voice in Sicily for sustainability, organics and biodynamic winemaking. She practices strict protocols at her estate that carries her name, and she is on the board of directors of Sicily’s SOStain Foundation. Launched in 2020, SOStain (Save our Soils) is a group of like-minded vintners located throughout the fertile island at the center of the Mediterranean. They have adopted an integrated sustainability protocol, with a 10-point action plan, a scientific committee for oversight and a certification program with a logo that member wineries can print on their bottles. Sicily was the first Italian region to take such important steps to marry sustainability and winemaking. “Arianna is a symbol of our green initiatives,” says SOStain President Alberto Tasca of Tasca Conti d’Almerita, a winner of the Robert Parker Green Emblem award last year. “She is on the board of our foundation and is focused on social and territorial issues. She shows sheer spirit that few others have, making her a symbol of both sustainability and humanism.” Based in Vittoria in the southeastern corner of Sicily with its grandiose Baroque architecture and pristine beaches, Arianna’s estate sits between the Iblei Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea. Her wine program is dedicated to indigenous grapes like Frappato and Nero d’Avola. In addition to 30 hectares of grapevines, her property is an oasis to everything local. She has 15 hectares of olive groves planted to the native Tonda Iblea cultivar and 10 hectares of Sicilian grains. She has fruit trees with pears, citrus and other orchard fruits that are specific to her island. Her chickens, too, are of the local “razza siciliana,” or Sicilian race. Her goal is to transform her agricultural goods into a small stimulus for the local economy. The orchard fruits are turned into fruit juices, her garden vegetables are featured on menus in the surrounding restaurants, and she sells her eggs. “I want to make sure that a monoculture in agriculture is transformed into multicultures,” she says. “If we can’t do it here in Sicily where the weather and the sunshine are on our side, where else can we do it? My dream is to see the Sicilian model reproduced in other parts of Italy.” Arianna Occhipinti played an important role in creating the Cook the Farm educational program inspired by the late Anna Tasca Lanza and run by her daughter Fabrizia Lanza (cousin to Alberto Tasca) today. Cook the Farm is an immersive and experimental take on food education in rural Sicily. Students (15 to 20 in each session lasting three months) come from around the world to learn about the complexities of the Sicilian food systems. There are specific seminars on wine grapes, olives and grains. Arianna leads the school’s wine program and will take the students into the vineyards with lectures, presentations and field work. “We want to teach our special take on Sicilian sustainability and biodiversity and show that it’s a model that can be adopted by others,” says Arianna.

Arianna Occhipinti is the niece of Giusto Occhipinti, one of three founders of the celebrated COS winery in Vittoria, Sicily. COS is a leader in Italy’s natural wine movement and was among the first to famously embrace the use of amphorae. In 2004, a 22-year-old Arianna would lease one hectare of vines in the Fossa di Lupo area of Vittoria planted to Nero d’Avola and Frappato. She had just completed her studies in viticulture and enology in Milan. Many young people from this rural corner of Sicily had left to start careers elsewhere, farming was depressed and indigenous grapes were all but abandoned, but Arianna was anxious to carve a career for herself in her native land. She was intent on safeguarding the vinous biodiversity of her beloved island. With inspiration and guidance from her uncle, Arianna immediately embraced a noninterventionist winemaking style. Copper and sulfur are reduced to a minimum, fermentations start with indigenous yeasts, the wines are unfiltered, and neutral large oak botte is used for aging. All of her wines are certified organic and made according to biodynamic protocols. Today, Arianna’s vineyard holdings have grown to 30 hectares spanning various Contrade, or subzones. In addition to a pure expression of Frappato called Il Frappato, she makes a Nero d’Avola called Siccagno and the Cerasuolo di Vittoria Classico Grotte Alte. To celebrate an ancient winemaking method, she makes a wine with air-dried Nero d’Avola called Passo Nero. Her popular SP68 line (with a blended white and a red) is named after the municipal road that cuts through the nearby villages, all of them dusty, sleepy and stunningly beautiful, made with carved white stone. In 2016, she started her Vino di Contrada series with three single-vineyard expressions of Frappato: BB (Contrada Bombolieri), FL (Contrada Fossa di Lupo) and PT (Contrada Pettineo). Her vines are located at 250 meters in elevation, and because this area was mostly underwater during the Miocene epoch, the soils range from clay, limestone, tufo, gold sand and red sand. “The soils change every meter, and so do the wines made from these sites,” Arianna says. She is also working on a Grillo with fruit from the Contrada Santa Margherita (at 500 meters above sea level) in the town of Chiaramonte Gulfi.