Sole Dei Padri 2012 - Sicilia I.G.P. - Dei Principi Di Spadafora

The noble Spadafora family has been producing wine for decades, but it was only in the 1990’ies that the family decided to begin bottling and marketing of the wine grown on the estate, where previously the wine has been sold in bulk. After testing and tasting the wines produced, the current owner Francesco Spadafora decided in 1993 that the estate should only produce wine from grapes grown on his land. Today the winery has 95 hectares of vineyards around Monreale growing both indigenous and international grapes.

The Syrah vines for the Sole dei Padri red wine grow in the sandy and clay vineyards of Spadafora in contrada Virzì in Monreale to the southwest of Palermo in western Sicily.

The grapes are grown at a height of 450 m above sea level and are subject to a temperature variation of 10-15°C, between day and night which improves the acid-sugar balance in the grapes.

The grapes were manually harvested, sorted, and destemmed. The grapes were fermented and macerated on the skins in stainless-steel tanks, After the fermentation the wine was transferred into concrete vats where malolactic fermentation took place, after which a portion of the wine was stored in small, 225-litre oak barrels in the ageing cellar, and another part was refined directly in concrete vats. The wine was refined for 1 year in oak barrels and then 24 months in bottles.