“Dagala di Bocca d’Orzo” Rosso Etna DOC 2024

Tenuta delle Terre Nere | Sicily
Az. Agr. Tenuta delle Terre Nere | Contrada Calderara | IT 95036 Randazzo

19173724 · 0,75 l · 158,67 €/l · Price (DE) incl. VAT, excl. Shippingavailable immediately
Limitation of 2 articles per customer

On 17 March 1981, a lava flow swept down the northern flank of Mount Etna. It buried what generations of farmers had built up. The Contrada Bocca d'Orzo – , long celebrated as one of the most significant vineyards on the entire volcano, together with the neighbouring San Lorenzo – , vanished beneath the lava. And because no one had bottled Bocca d’Orzo separately before 1981, its history vanished with it. There are no bottles, no notes, no reference material. Only the memory – and the eyes of old farmers, which light up when you ask them. What the wines from there must have been like can be gauged from a single fact: as the lava cooled, half a dozen winegrowers, whose plots had been buried, covered the solidified lava flow with tonnes of earth and replanted – in the hope of regaining their lost greatness. That is not a rational act. That is faith.

In 2017, Marco de Grazia discovered something that no one had thought possible: a hidden island in the middle of the 1981 lava flow – , yet spared. The last surviving vineyard of Bocca d’Orzo. Following negotiations with four brothers, whom de Grazia himself describes as ‘unspeakable’ – , the purchase was finalised in 2018. De Grazia immediately named the vineyard ‘Dagala’ – the Sicilian word for island, which he regards as the equivalent of a ‘clos’ in Burgundy. A vineyard that stands alone. A monopoly. 70-year-old Nerello Mascalese vines. North-facing. 5 quintals per hectare – —that is 1/16th of the DOC’s permitted maximum. Three barriques from the first vintage, 2019. No more than 2,000 bottles per year – no more. The 2024 vintage is the sixth vintage of this great wine miracle.

A deep, luminous ruby red with garnet highlights. The bouquet is of exceptional depth and tranquillity: dark cherry, blackberry, lava-like minerality, spices, dried flowers, balsam – complex and possessing a precision that only a soil with such a history can produce. On the palate, it is of great density yet simultaneously weightless; the tannins are silky and firm, the acidity supportive and long-lasting, the final seemingly endless. A wine that ought not to exist – and which is precisely why it is so moving. SUPERIORE.DE