Salvo Foti, the pillar of tradition in Mt Etna winegrowing

For most of it lengthy vinous history, the Mt Etna region has utilized the albarello training system as the foundation of its viticultural regime. This system reigned supreme until growers turned to the Guyot and speranato cordone (cordon spur) systems in the early and middle portions of the 20th century. As explained to me by Salvo Foti during a recent conversation, if you went back 20 years, most new plantings were Guyot, as growers pursued the perceived benefits of mechanization and increased yields. As a result, he said, we (the Etna growers) have lost our patrimonial history. But now things are looking up, he continued, as small producers are going back to albarello for new plantings.

Viticulture on the mountain is a mix of the traditional and these "newer" training systems and associated practices. There is no fiercer proponent and advocate of the traditional approach than the aforementioned Salvo Foti.  I provide some insight into Mr Foti's philosophy and practices in this post.

In their seminal work on Sicilian wine (The World of Sicilian Wine), Nesto and di Savino describe the subject thusly: "Salvo Foti stands out, by himself, as Sicily's greatest homegrown consulting enologist ..." who "... more than any other person, ... has fostered an awareness of (Etna's) unique wine culture."

Salvo Foti with Lidia Rizzo, Contrada Caselle

According to Nesto and di Savino, Foti's grandparents owned vineyards on the slopes of Etna. Salvo gained a technical degree in enology on the 1980s and began consulting work with a number of producers in Sicily. He continued his studies and eventually received a specialized degree in enology from the University of Catania. When Giuseppe Benanti made the commitment to the production of high-quality wine on Etna, he turned to the young Foti to work with him on the needed experiments. Foti was Benanti's enologist until they parted ways in 2011.

In his writings (Foti has written a couple of books and a number of pamphlets on wine-related topics), Foti draws a sharp contrast between "producing Etna wines" and "making wine on Etna." Producing an Etna wine results in a product that "captures the essence of the land, the environment, and the people;" requires a winemaker who is "committed to improving and preserving the land where she or he operates," and a vineyard that is ...

in harmony with the terroir, is naturally integrated with the Etna volcano and is expressed in vertical: lives and grows upwards (leaves and shoots to the sky, in lavic stone terraces) and down in the depth (roots), in opposite directions but complementary between them (Salvo Foti, Applied Viticulture, Book 4, The Etnean Palmento: the traditional vinification).

Foti's core mission, as described by Nesto and di Savino, is:

• Protection of the land
• Preservation of albarello viticulture
• Cultivation of indigenous vine varieties
• Emphasizing the humanity of the grower
• Conservation of Sicilian culture.

His key viticultural principles are:

• The use of the albarello training system
• Dense vine spacing
• Avoidance of systemic sprays and synthetic soil additives
• Chestnut poles for vine support.

Foti's key principles on display at Aeris Vineyard

In Foti's view (expressed in my conversation with him), albarello is perfect for grape maturity: (i) the leaves cover the grapes, affording protection from the sun's direct rays and (ii) it affords the capability of working around the vine. He is not a big fan of non-albarello training systems (Foti, The Verticality of Etna):

In the Etna, the vineyard cultivated in the horizontal way (destruction of the terraces to make flat the land, cultivation of the vineyards in the espalier system) is a forcing system for the vine, intended only for the mechanization and for the quantity. 

Foti has been very proactive in disseminating his thoughts and practices:

• I previously mentioned the books and pamphlets
• Salvo has formed an organization called I Vigneri which is comprised of like-minded grape growers and producers operating in Etna and eastern Sicily. In addition to work on their personal properties (if so endowed), members of the organization are available to work the vineyards of clients, all work based on the I Vigneri principles.
• He has guided new Etna winemakers, such as Ciro Biondi and Alice Bonaccorsi, and has served as consultant to Edomé, Romeo del Castello, and Il Cantante, among others.
• Salvo's work on Pietra Marina caught the eye of Kevin Harvey of US-based Rhys Vineyards and they eventually entered into a partnership to grow Carricante grapes at the Aeris Vineyard in Contrada Caselle. But that is not the end of the story. Salvo is also planting a Carricante vineyard for Harvey in California, using I Vigneri practices and personnel.

In our conversation Salvo emphasized that his focus was on respect for the people and the environment. In the Mt Etna region they have been doing the same thing for over 200 years. The viticulture and the people have evolved together and he sees no reason to change that dynamic. He feels strongly that he has a responsibility to the people and the native varieties of the region to ensure their continuity.

And that continuity extends to his farming and management of the land. His grandfather and father worked Carricante. He is farming the way they did. They passed the practices and principles on to him and he is passing it on to his son Simone. And hopefully Simone will pass it on to his son. Continuity.

Foti with his son Simone

Simone, Salvo, Lidia Rizzo, and Brandon Tokash

Salvo Foti and author (Photo credit Lidia Rizzo)

Foti is a quiet and soft-spoken man. At least those were the characteristics that he projected during the course of our meeting. But he also impressed as being extremely knowledgeable, having a strong sense of self, commitment to a set of ideals, and intensity of purpose. Albarello could not have happened upon a stronger proponent.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Pre-Phylloxera vines and albarello training in Mt Etna viticulture

In a recent Mt. Etna wine masterclass held in London, Ian D'Agata pronounced that a combination of three factors contribute to the "special" nature of the region's wines: (i) an alpine climate in a Mediterranean land; (ii) volcanic soils: and (iii) the predominance of ungrafted, pre-phylloxera vines (http://www.decanter.com/wine-news/opinion/the-editors-blog/etna-wines-volcanic-soil-306217/). I have previously discussed the unique Etna climate and its volcanic soils and contradas. In this post I discuss these pre-Phylloxera vines and their historic training system.

French vineyards had been decimated by the Phylloxera infestation of the late 1860s, causing French winemakers to cast far afield for sources of supply to fulfill the consumer demand for wine. The French misfortune led to increased demand for wines from Spain, Algeria, and Sicily. According to Eric Asimov, the heyday of demand for Etna wines from France saw a total of 48,562 ha planted to vines on the mountain.

As was the case for Algeria and Spain, Phylloxera did eventually invade Etna but the impact was most felt at altitudes of 400 m and below where sedimentary sols dominated. According to Nesto and di Savino (The World of Sicilian Wine), the decimated vineyards at those altitudes were replaced with citrus fruit trees and new vineyards were planted at higher altitudes where the soils had greater proportions of lava rock and volcanic sand and were resistant to the depradations of the aphid. According to the authors, these new vineyards joined an existing belt of vineyards resident on the northern slope between Solicchiata and Randazzo.

The remnants of that belt of vineyards are today's pre-Phylloxera vineyards of which Ian D'Agata speaks so highly. The picture directly below shows a pre-Phylloxera vine from the Tenuta delle Terre Nere vineyard while the table below that shows a selection of labels from these old vines.

Pre-phylloxra vine. Source: tenutaterrenere.com

Table 1: A selection of the pre-Phylloxera vineyards used in wines from Etna.

Producer	Label	Vineyard	Contrada	Size (ha)	Vineyard Age (yrs)	Training System
I Vigneri	Vinupetra	Calderara	Feudo di Mezzo	0.5	100	Albarello
	Vinudilice	Bosco		0.35	100+	do.
Tenuta Terre Nere	Prephylloxera	Don Peppino	Calderara Sottano	0.8	130 - 140	do.
Graci	Quota 1000		Barbabecchi	2	100+	do.
Pietradolce	Vigna Barbagalli	Barbagalli	Rampante		80 - 100	do.
	Rampante	Barbagalli	Rampante		80 - 100	do.
	Archineri Etna Bianco				100 - 120	do.
Frank Cornelissen	Magma Rosso		Barbabecchi		100+	do.
	Munjebel Rosso Chiusa	Zottorinoto	Chiusa Spagnolo		90+	do.
	Munjebel Rosso Vigne Alta		Barbabecchi, Tartaraci, Monte Dolce		90+	do.
	Munjebel Bianco Vigne Alta		Tartaraci		90+	do.

And these pre-Phylloxera vineyards had all been albarello-trained (As were all vines planted prior to the introduction of the Guyot training system.). Albarello training was well suited to the Etna environment. According to Nesto and di Savinio:

• Its free-standing configuration aids in withstanding the high winds to which the mountain is prone
• The 360-degree exposure to light aids in the ripening of the fruit
• The black soil readily absorbs radiation from the sun and warms up. The low training of the vines allow them to take advantage of that heat and ripen the grapes faster than would other training systems
• This low training also allows for more rapid evaporation of water through the skin of the ripe fruit, resulting in greater sugar concentration in the fruit (and higher alcohol in the wine)
• The vine conserves the humidity arising from the ground, a plus in dry growing conditions.

Albarello-trained vines in Etna are planted at densities of 8000 to 10,000 vines/ha dictating costly manual labor for vineyard work. Many of the old vineyards have lost their uniformity due to the practice of replacing damaged vines by sticking one of the branches into the ground where it takes root.

The Albarello system was dominant on the mountain until growers turned first to the Guyot system -- the first half of the 20th century -- and  the cordon-spur system -- beginning in the 1950s -- for new vineyard plantings.


©Wine -- Mise en abyme