PLANETA Chardonnay Didacus 2019

Detailní popis produktu

Chardonnay Didacus

Sicilia Menfi Doc

Dear Friends,

we have been a landowning family – Genus dominorum praediorum – for many, many generations; and for at least four more, contrary to the archaic traditions and custom of Sicily, ownership has come to mean love, care, passion and after that, and only after that, income. To the 60’s generation, Sicilian winegrowing seemed cramped, in tight shoes, – there was an irresistible attraction to innovation and to change, a long look around the world, close observation and finally…

In February 1985, 4 hectares of chardonnay were planted, in one swoop going back a century: to winegrowing at the time of the Orléans, royal exiles from France, and the Princes of Valdina; Baron Mendola, a keen scholar of viticulture and the equally enlightened Baron Spitaleri, all of whose wines, made from noble vines cultivated across the alps in their ancestral lands, graced great tables in many European courts. It wasn’t an easy planting; an exceptionally hot summer, plants developed for other climates, soils full of clay and limestone, difficult to tame but generous in the quality of their yield. To be brief, many vines disappeared, only to be replanted, regrafted and set up again with the tenacity of those who believe strongly in a different future.

Never has so much work been more handsomely rewarded: in 1989 the great gentleman-enologist Carlo Corino arrived – Piedmontese by birth and culture, decades of work in Australia, the Wizard of chardonnay in temperate climates.

He was as enthusiastic about those 4 hectares as he was about the sun and the warm humanity that he felt in Sicily; we worked together to make a legendary wine which, from the first vintage in 1994 up to this day, has filled us with joy and great satisfaction. Time goes on and in July 2014, after 30 years, walking through the glorious vineyard, an expert eye can clearly spot the vines that took hold in 1985 and since then have been growing along happily...“Eureka”!

Thank goodness my nephew Alessio has lots of imagination.

Our master agronomists cover the whole vineyard and mark the plants they’ve selected; at the right moment our expert workmen choose the best bunches which are transported, pressed and put into barriques.

One more year of anxious anticipation and finally, Didacus is born; it rests in the bottle for the right period of time and now it’s here for you.

Why Didacus?

My beloved father Vito used to call me different names.

Diego was for every day, Dieguzzo was for when we felt extremely close to each other, Didacus, (when I was small it made me think of Luciferus) was for my all too frequent outbursts of unruly behavior.

The fifth of seven children, a big house… But that’s another story and one day I’ll tell it to you.

My thanks to all of you for your attention, and to all those who have worked to produce this wine.

Diego Planeta