Posted on 10/18/2018
With the purchase of its proprietary Estates, Duca di Salaparuta has focused more and more on the principle of zoning, which in Sicily benefits from the island’s remarkable heterogeneity and biodiversity. This involves extensive study of the unique features of each Terroir and how they influence the qualitative characteristics of winemaking. This helps us to ensure not only that each grape variety can best express its own features, but also that in doing so it defends the concept of biodiversity, of which the island is such an exceptional example. In the agronomic context, biotypes are identical vines which, evolving in different environments, can develop morphological and/or biological differences. The choice of Terroir and the wine practices applied are therefore fundamental in determining the specific features of our products, which vary according to the oenological plasticity of the grape varieties used. The choice of cultivating a vine in one area rather than another leads to very different results and even within the same vineyard the differences can be considerable, because the Terroir may offer unique individual characteristics even a few meters away. Within each Estate, therefore, grapes can be harvested which will give rise to wines with a different personalities. Starting from the 2015 harvest, moreover, Duca di Salaparuta – through two types of investigation, one traditional and one experimental – launched a further technical exploration of its Terroirs, with the following goals: to follow and link the changes in the chemical composition of the grapes during the course of maturation, to compare the kinetics of maturation from one vintage to another (depending on climatic conditions), to compare the evolution of one vineyard with respect to another (depending on their Terroirs) and to predict the date of optimal ripeness, in order to determine when to begin grape picking.