White wine · Pantelleria
ZINO
Moscato di Alessandria · Pantelleria
ZINO is born on Pantelleria, from one reclaimed hectare of old Moscato di Alessandria vines. A Mediterranean white, aromatic and saline, it carries dog rose, helichrysum, apricot, elderflower, rosemary and almond into the glass, with a mineral, direct mouthfeel.
Grape variety
100% Moscato di Alessandria
Origin
Pantelleria, Sicily
Soil
Volcanic, rich in pumice and sand
Training system
Alberello (bush vine)
Density
4,000 vines/ha
Annual production
Around 1,500 bottles
Origin and vineyard
ZINO comes from a farming project on the island of Pantelleria, where an abandoned hectare of roughly 60-year-old vines was reclaimed. The variety is Moscato di Alessandria, grown as bush vines on volcanic soils.
The soil matrix, rich in pumice and sand, shapes the wine’s profile: bright, saline, mineral, deeply bound to the scents and substance of the island.
Winemaking and profile
After the harvest on Pantelleria, the grapes are brought to the cellar in Tuscany. Fermentation is spontaneous and starts in open tubs, with 5 days of skin contact.
After the wine is drawn off the skins, fermentation finishes in concrete, with bâtonnage on the fine lees every 7 days. It then ages 6 months in a Tava amphora and rests a further 6 months in bottle.
The story
How ZINO came to be
In the summer of 2018 we came back from Pantelleria with the island still on our skin: the wind, the volcano, the salt, the helichrysum, the dry light that lingers. From that journey came the idea of reclaiming a small abandoned vineyard, one hectare of bush-trained Moscato di Alessandria vines over sixty years old.
After a year of pruning, care and quiet work, the first harvest arrived in 2019. The grapes were brought to the cellar in Suvereto, not to erase their origin but to listen to it more closely: to vinify them with the same attention given to the Belvedere vines and to understand, year after year, what form the expression of Pantelleria might take.
That is how ZINO came to be: from an unexpected encounter, from a vineyard returned to life and from the wish to bring the island’s most essential character into the wine. Not an exotic flourish, but a real fragment of farming — Mediterranean, saline, aromatic.
