COS, Nero di Lupo 2022

The organic grapes come from vineyards at 230 meter a.s.l. with red soils formed of sand and limestone. The average age of vines is 15 years. After spontaneous fermentation on the skins with indigenous yeasts, the wine is aged in concrete tanks and bottle.

Giusto Occhipinti, started the COS winery back in the early 1980s with two classmates, Giambattista Cilia and Cirino Strano. The acronym of the first character of their last names is where the name for the winery – COS – comes from. On a shoestring budget, the three friends vinified the grapes from their parents’ vineyards. They even bought Angelo Gaja’s used French barrels back in 1983 to age the wine. By the late 1980s, they started buying new barriques and felt the influence of California’s Napa Valley. Other winemakers in the area were impressed with the results and also began making Cerasuolo di Vittoria, using the two local varieties (Nero d'Avola and Frappato) instead of selling the grape juice from overripe Nero d’Avola. “Then we took a huge step back,” Occhipinti recalls. “We tried some of our earliest bottlings, those matured in used barriques, and we were shocked at the difference. With its mineral notes and earthy sensations, the wine was so much more interesting than the later vintages matured in new oak with sensations of vanilla and toast. Just as everyone else in the mid-1990s invested in new
French barriques, we began recycling ours. Since then the journey has taken them away from oak to cement and finally into
amphora in order to obtain the most aromatic expression of the wines. He also notes that COS does not use selected yeasts
and has never used chemicals in the vineyards. “Our goal isn’t to make wines that impress wine critics, but to make wine that
expresses our great terroir. Here, Nero d’Avola is more elegant than in other regions, and has these great mineral notes from
the soil.