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Giuseppe Bursi’s expression is solemn as he scrolls his phone for messages from his producers. Bursi is the President of the Cantine Settesoli Group, a cooperative of growers and wine producers across Sicily. This year, the 5000 families that make up the community are on the frontline of climate change in Europe. Sicily has endured consistent high temperatures of up to 49°C, threatening their grape crops and livelihoods.
“It’s a disaster,” says Bursi. “We’re looking at grape yields down 30, 40%, some are even facing loses of as much as 60 or 70%.”
Cantine Settesoli in Sicily
Cantine Settesoli includes over 6000 hectares of vineyards located across Sicily. The system is a cooperative, made up of small family holdings, of three to four hectares, on average. The group was founded in 1958 due to a desperate need on the part of the growers, who simply lacked opportunities to sell their grapes at a viable price.
The island of Sicily is a unique place, it presents unique challenges to those who live there and yet, there is no place like it in the world in terms of cultural and historical diversity. Peel back the layers of one problem and you are presented with a myriad of new ones. Nothing is what it seems here and it takes a specialised skillset to manage an organisation like Settesoli.
Sicily's limestone soil terroir from above
“We’re coming off a very difficult period,” says Bursi. “We had Covid, the war in Ukraine, the supply chain crisis, it has been very, very challenging.
“Nevertheless,” he says. “We remain focused. We live in an extraordinary territory, with a limitless potential. Sicilian wines have been underestimated in recent years, but we have the terroir, we have the expertise and we believe we can make wine that can rival those from anywhere.
“My overall mission is to prove to the world that we can, as a cooperative, make wine of the highest quality”.
“I love Sicily,” wrote Anthony Bourdain. “It’s beautiful. It’s old. It’s Italy, but it’s not. I like the people – proudly mixed up, preyed upon by generations of invaders and a nearly ubiquitous fraternal organisation that makes even the simplest transaction – like getting fruit to market – complicated. Sicilian food is exactly everything I love: the cuttlefish-stained pasta, street meat, inky wines, oily fishes…”
Mandrarossa wines, a CSG brand
The uniqueness of Sicilian wines
Apart from Sicily’s complex and multi-layered history, the island itself has a uniquely rich and diverse geology. Cantine Settesoli’s vineyards are spread over a multitude of territories, altitudes, soils and topographies, allowing growers to cultivate 36 different varieties. It gives winemakers at Settesoli a broad palette to draw from when blending their 73 different wine labels.
Sicily, impossible to define, has the capacity to surprise at every turn. And the same goes for Settesoli’s wines. Producing 19.6 million bottles a year to be exported to over 44 markets, you could say that the group is leading a new wave of Sicilian wines that can be valued for their character and quality in comparison with any territory of note.
Take the much-maligned nero d’avola grape, which has fallen out of favour in recent years; under the charge of Settesoli’s oenologists, the wine is worthy of a new appraisal, full-bodied and fruity, with strong cherry notes and a prune finish. It is a well-balanced and poised wine, moreover, it is the essence of Sicilia and its winemaking tradition. Its character endures, just like the people of this island.
Most of Italy’s wine countries are subject to a new colonisation. Investment funds, billionaires and multinationals are moving in to purchase vast swathes of vineyards. The price of land in the most notable regions has skyrocketed in recent years, forcing locals out and seeing family holding become assimilated into mono-cultural operations.
Giuseppe Bursi
Settesoli is different, it maintains the diversity of families, of culture and crucially, of a certain biodiversity across its 6000 hectares. As each family holding is small enough to manage directly, Cantine Settesoli can realistically manage the optimisation of each micro-terroir. As the soils and the terrain can vary even within this small plots, with the help of the wine growers themselves, and with the knowledge and expertise provided by a decades-long collaboration with the University of Palermo, it is possible to fully express the land’s natural diversity through the cultivation of different grapes.
The system lends itself to a more careful, respectful cultivation, evidenced by Settesoli’s 155 winegrowers who are dedicated to organic farming methods over 1000 hectares. Organic and regenerative farming methods, of course are more achievable on smaller scale farms than they are on the larger, efficiency and profit-driven models.
As the challenges grow for Settesoli and its producers, so too does the opportunity. The value of a responsible and environmentally-friendly business model has increased dramatically on the retail market in recent years and will only continue to grow. Add to this, the price point of Settesoli’s wines, which are very affordable, and you have a product of great potential. This cantina could easily charge more for what they produce, however accessibility and democracy are part of the terroir.
The climate crisis presents a particularly grim challenge for Sicily. This summer saw wildfires rage across the island spread by strong winds and arid conditions prompting evacuations of residents and tourists. Somehow, though, for Settesoli’s winegrowers the imperative is not only to survive in this adversity, but to thrive. The mission remains the same – to prove that a cooperative can produce wines of the highest quality, while providing a dignified and sustainable way of life for the people who live there.
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