From our heroic vineyard of Grecanico Dorato, located at 1100 mt. a.s.l. on Mount Etna, our Millesulmare has been chosen to accompany Pope Francis’s menù during his Apostolic travel in Ecuador in July.
Marco Picano is the chef that organized the event, he has tasted our Millesulmare during a very important Italian wine festival (the chef really loves Etna wines) and he decided to include them on the menù for the Pope’s flight on July 5th.
Our friend SUNSHINE LICHAUCO DE LEON, journalist and producer, after having visited us numerous times has send us this lovely story.
Follow Sunshine on www. sunshinedeleon.com
There is nothing like exploring Sicily through the eyes of a Sicilian. They know and love their beautiful island with a passion that is contagious and admirable. Sicilians and southern Italians do everything with extreme passion whether hate or love, and Sicilians love their home.
Mount Etna is, with its 3343 meters above the sea level, the highest volcano in Europa and for us it’s also the most beautiful. It stands uncontested against the huge sky that has witnessed its birth and its polyhedral transformations over the course of time. Ruler of part of Eastern Sicily, its pride and its restless nature have been accurately recorded over thousands of years, bestowing upon Mungibeddu, a nickname affectionately given to the mountain by the population living on his slopes, a sense of reference, gratitude and respect unique all over the world, which is typical of a holy mountain.
Our friend Dario di Bella, photographer and writer, proving once more his boundless love for Mount Etna, wanted to add our vineyard to a number of nights spent sleeping in the open, without a tent. He calls these experiences Microadventures and they have many followers among lovers of nature and of eco-friendly tourism. Dario is one of those people who chose to dedicate their life to their dreams, which are nature, photography and writing. With his sweet wife, he left Milan in order to spend most of their time on the Nebrodi Mountains. They had planned this return to nature for years, studying every move.
Curiosity, a need for oxygen and salt air and the necessity of a short change of perspective brought us here, on the distant and wild Alicudi.
It’s not easy coming here. There are few connections and it takes almost 3 hours by hydrofoil from Milazzo. As soon as you touch the ground, however, you enter another dimension: a small society, shaped by the proud heights of this ancient volcano. Alicudi is nothing else than the emerged part of a more than 150 million years old volcano (Etna was born approximately 600 thousand years ago). If you try humanizing volcanos, just for a second, assuming that Etna was a little 18 years old girl (Sicilian people often attribute the feminine gender to Mont Etna: “a Muntagna!” (la montagna – the mountain)), then Alicudi would be a lively 4500 years old man.
Respect to Alicudi.
