Dear friend,
I would like to dedicate this insight to an important change that I have decided to undertake after years of doing this job: the new graphic project that involves Marabino, from the logo to the labels, up to a major evolution involving some of our wines.
I have always focused my attention above all on the vineyard and in the cellar, trying to support my training path, which over the years has outlined my stylistic idea of the wines of this area. Above all, a wine must have character and identity, it would be simplistic to speak only of quality. While on the one hand I have always been convinced of the biodynamic management of the vineyard, on the other I have always tried to best interpret its fruits, without however alter the wine with invasive techniques or oenological products. My own experience has grown not only with the passing of the harvests but also thanks to the comparison with producers that I admire, to get inspiration from.
The initial management of Marabino was not easy for me: I had to adapt the company and the people who worked there to my ideas related to biodynamic agriculture and natural winemaking, and at the same time I had to create a commercial structure capable of selling the production, considering the number of bottles of wine that were already being produced it was not an easy task. Over the years the work in the vineyard and in the cellar has borne fruit, from a commercial point of view the wines have been increasingly appreciated and sales have gone better and better, so much that we often find ourselves with products that are out of stock within a few months. I have to be honest: I have never wanted to spend time and energy on the graphic aspect of the labels of our wines, for years I have been focused more on the product than on its graphic appearance. In recent times, however, I have felt the need to work on labels capable of communicating our production philosophy in the best possible way and to enhance the characteristics of our wines and our territory.
But there’s more, passion prompted me to produce wines for single plots, thanks to the chromatic and composite facets of our clayey-limestone soils. A fascinating job from a didactic and cognitive point of view of our vineyards, but demanding from a production point of view, even before a commercial one, which is why I decided to maintain the production of parcels that I consider to be of superior quality and at the same time to merge the expressions of our soils into two red wines capable of summarizing its origins: Terre Calcaree and Terre Argillose.
These two Nero d’Avola-based wines are today the synthesis of our soils, all of clayey-limestone nature. Two wines that want to convey, through their differences, how the land of origin of the vineyard is the most determining factor in the identity of a wine.
- Terre Calcaree is obtained from the selection of grapes from the Conca and Lenza Lunga vineyards, a very floral wine that stands out for its elegance, freshness, and salty minerality.
- Terre Argillose is obtained from the grapes of the Don Paolo and Parrino vineyards, selected on the more clayey side, “a crita”. It is a more horizontal wine, with a tannic structure well enhanced by the freshness and with a particular fruity richness.
Terre Calcaree and Terre Argillose 2021 will be on the market from next spring, we have decided to let them age less than the other reds to offer two versions of Nero d’Avola for lovers of freshness and tension, I’m sure they will surprise you!
The graphic representations, the logo and the name of each wine of the new labels are concentrated in the lower part, in order to recall the same artistic technique of Caravaggio used in the painting of the burial of Saint Lucia, in the homonymous extra moenia church in Syracuse. At the same time, we have tried to work with white to recall the important impact of light in our territory, which in addition to boasting an always clear and cloudless sky is characterized by a particular luminosity, being located in the middle between two different seas: the Ionian sea and the Strait of Sicily.
Each wine has an image on the label linked to one of our sensations and to the emotion which that specific product creates in us, it goes beyond the taste of the wine but is anchored to aspects linked to the biodynamic philosophy (and to the four elements: earth, air, fire and water) as well as to the roots of our company’s history. The image of each label is explained on our new site – www.marabino.it – that I invite you to visit, this is a job that has engaged us for more than a year.
Until next time!
Pierpaolo Messina