I am in the process of writing a series on the Mt Etna wine pioneers and have, to date, covered the late Giuseppe Benanti (Benanti Viticoltori), Salvo Foti (I Vigneri Salvo Foti & Figli). and the late Andrea Franchetti of Vini Franchetti. I continue herein with Frank Cornelissen.
Very few names are as tightly linked to the emergent Etna quality wine market as is Frank Cornelissen's. According to Roberto Camuto (Palmento: A Sicilian Wine Odyssey):
Frank ... had come to Etna because he believed it was the one spot in the world where you could make a wine entirely free of all chemicals, additives and modernity both in the vineyards and in the winery. ... Among fellow winemakers ... Frank is generally respected as a perfectionist. Among hard core enthusiasts in northern Europe and Japan, Frank has developed a fan base for a miniscule production ...Nesto and di Savino (The World of Sicilian Wine) described Frank as having helped ignite interest in Etna wine. "Since ... he first visited Etna, he has tantalized both locals and wine cognoscienti with his boldly intuitive artisanal wines." And intuition is the key here as he had no formal training or background in winemaking prior to embarking on this venture. His prior relationship to the industry had been as a wine broker.
In reviewing the literature, I found two versions of Frank's initial encounter with Etna: one more elevated and the other more down-to-earth. In winesofetna.com, Frank states:
Piemonte was actually my reference point in the search for a great winemaking area. And so when I arrived here on Etna, I found a lot of values of Piemonte, the artisanal part, the rustic part, and the link from producer to soil, to territory ... And so when I arrived, I found Piemonte from the 80s, the 70s and I thought "Wow, I found a new Piemonte!" ... so what we have here is an unpolished jewel and a pure diamond, a raw diamond, and we are gradually polishing it, which means that we are also the cause of, lets say, a new arc of winemaking on Etna.
In a more earthly dialogue with Sedimentary Wines, Frank said:
After years of traveling all over the world in search of territorially expressive wines, I tasted a bottle of Etna which was served blind and it struck me. So I decided to visit Etna and after spending a day driving around the mountain, I was instantly attracted when entering the northern valley. The natural beauty of its environment reminded me of Georgia: the climate, the old vines, the stone walls ... Everything fell into place here: altitude, real winters with snow, intensity of the light, dry climate, the century old culture of vine growing ... I was lucky to find a small plot at the end of 2000 and I started working it for 2001 -- which was my first vintage.
It has never been clear which Etna wine it was that set Frank off on his path but we do know that his first plot was 0.4 ha of ungrafted, high-elevation vines in the northern valley of Mt Etna.
As reported in wineanorak.com, after 20 years of tasting, Frank leaned towards wines that were "an expression of culture, that were more evolved, and which express the soil more than the fruit." To get to the types of wines that he liked, he figured that he would have to make his own wines without any interventions in the vineyard, winemaking, or bottling.
Frank refers to his early wines as "extremely intellectual" in that they were linear, angular, precise, and full of minerality. His goal was to "create liquid stone." His wines have softened with the passage of time as he has sought to "strike a balance between fruit and dynamic minerality."
The Early Years
We get a peek into the early Cornelissen wines from a series of Jamie Goode (wineanorak.com) reports on tastings. The first report came out of a session in London in 2004. At the time Jamie described the Cornelissen project as "one of the most unique and unusual projects I have encountered in the world of wine."
At that time Cornelissen was managing 5 ha of which 2.5 ha were devoted to ungrafted vines grown alberello style. The remainder was home to olive and fruit trees, bushes and other plants, all intermixed to avoid a monoculture. The grape vines were planted at a density of 4000 vines/ha in order to promote ventilation and allow the cultivation of other plants and vegetables between the vines.
Treatments in the vineyards and surrounds were shunned; except for the 2002 and 2003 vintages when Bordelaise mix was required to save the vines.
The strategy was to harvest late -- and in multiple passes -- in order to obtain "beautifully healthy and ripe grapes." Yields were at 300 gm/vine, effected via short pruning, tailoring of bunches, and hand plucking of unripe or damaged berries.
The wine was subjected to lengthy maceration of the skins in order to "extract all possible aromas of soil and area." No sulphur was added at any phase of the winemaking process. The Magma wine was made from grapes grown on 50- to 80-year-old vines from the highest part of the vineyard. These grapes were fermented and aged in ~400 L terracotta amphorae which were buried up their necks in the cellar. Frank traveled widely in order to secure clay with the right density for his amphorae. The amphora allows oxygen ingress without imparting wood tannins and color to the wine. The skins were separated from the wine after malolactic fermentation.
The 2001 vintage was comprised of 515 bottles of Magma Rosso made with grapes sourced from the Muganazza Vineyard and an equivalent number of bottles of Rosso del Mungibello. The 2002 vintage amounted to approximately 2000 bottles of which 1100 were Magma Rossos sourced from the Trefiletti, Marchesa, and Calderara Vineyards, respectively. and 900 bottles were labeled Rosso del Contadino.
The goal at that time, as stated to Jamie, was to arrive at 6000 to 8000 bottles spread over the following labels:
- Magma Rosso -- monovarietal, single-vineyard wines
- Magma bianco -- Jura-style oxidized wine
- Rosso del Mongibello -- multi-varietal, multi-vineyard wines with lower levels of maceration and bottled with fine lees.
At the time of the 2004 tasting, the estate was planting ungrafted Riesling renano at 980 - 1010 m for the Bianco. In regards to the wines tasted, Jamie said as follows: "I was expecting the wines to be weird and oxidized. But they were actually fantastic."
By the time Jamie tasted the Cornelissen wines again in 2008, the estate surface area had increased to 12 ha, 8.5 of which were designated for vineyards. By the May 2011 tasting, the vineyards had increased to 11 ha, the vines numbered 55,000, and 22,000 bottles were produced. In the discourse accompanying the tasting, Frank identified 2006 as a turning point for the estate. That was the year in which the number of plots were managed down. He identified 2010 as a year of significance because of (i) the recognition of the fact that the wine style had changed over the course of the foregoing decade and (ii) the introduction of epoxy lining for the amphorae. The wine style had changed over the years mostly due to changes in the timing of bottling as well as accumulated experience. Epoxy lining was introduced for the amphorae as a means of combating elevated VA levels induced by the retention of bacteria in the walls.
My Conversations with Frank
Brandon Tokash and I visited Frank at his cellar in 2016 and I subsequently did an InstagramLive with Frank during the time of the pandemic. My learnings are recounted herein.
During my visit to the cellar, there was a low-walled container, sitting just inside the entrance, which was semi-filled with a liquid and we were asked to douse the soles of our footwear into that liquid in order to "decontaminate " them. This was the very first time I had ever encountered this practice. This guy was definitely different.
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| Frank and Brandon |
Looking around the cellar, I was greeted by unfamiliar sights. In your typical cellar you see stainless steel tanks, or cement tanks, or concrete eggs, or wooden vats. Not so here. Instead I experienced a number of mud-colored, plastic-looking containers (turned out to be fiberglass) and a jarring absence of the expected.
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| Cellarware |
Frank walked over to a large map on one of the cellar walls and embarked on a disquisition of site and grape growing in the Etna region. According to Frank, Etna can be divided into four sides:
- Western
- This side has never been planted to vines (too cold)
- Northern
- This area gets more sun than the southern slopes
- In this zone it is all about the vineyard
- He sees it as the future Côte de Nuit with Nerello Mascalese and vineyard diversity as the vehicles
- Southern
- Variety is key here
- Eastern
- Variety is key here.
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| Etna growing zones |
The northern zone stretches between the towns of Linguaglossa in the east to Randazzo in the west and it is from within this area that Frank sources the grapes for his wines. He farms between 18.5 and 24 ha, 10 ha of which is owned and the balanced leased. The vines are distributed between 12 red and 6 white vineyard sites in Linguaglossa and one red and one white vineyard site in Randazzo. The location of the vineyard sites are shown in the figure below.
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| Linguaglossa as the right-hand map; Randazzo as the left |
Frank is looking to buy a new property each year up until he gets to 30 ha. The characteristics that he looks for in a site include exposure and quality/type of subsoil. He sees high-altitude vineyards as "precious" due to their greater access to light.
As it relates to farming practices, Frank is not a big fan of biodynamic farming. He sees it as beneficial if used as a cure rather than as a practice. For example, if a site is "dead," biodynamic farming could be used to regenerate the soil. That was the basis for Steiner's introduction of the method: an attempt to combat beaten-up soils in Europe. Intensive agriculture has not been practiced on Etna so the soils are in good shape. There is no need for biodynamic farming here.
Biodynamic farming as a concept is fine but biodynamic wine does not exist by principle, according to Frank. You can say wine made from biodynamically grown grapes but not biodynamic wine.
As opposed to biodynamic farming, Frank sees benefits to organic farming with homeopathic applications. Cornelissen is certified organic (Frank observed that organic certification had higher standards in the US than it did in Europe.).
As it relates to farming practices, Frank is not a big fan of biodynamic farming. He sees it as beneficial if used as a cure rather than as a practice. For example, if a site is "dead," biodynamic farming could be used to regenerate the soil. That was the basis for Steiner's introduction of the method: an attempt to combat beaten-up soils in Europe. Intensive agriculture has not been practiced on Etna so the soils are in good shape. There is no need for biodynamic farming here.
Biodynamic farming as a concept is fine but biodynamic wine does not exist by principle, according to Frank. You can say wine made from biodynamically grown grapes but not biodynamic wine.
As opposed to biodynamic farming, Frank sees benefits to organic farming with homeopathic applications. Cornelissen is certified organic (Frank observed that organic certification had higher standards in the US than it did in Europe.).
The foundation of the Frank Cornelissen style is non-intervention and this philosophy permeates every aspect of the estate's grape-growing and winemaking activities. The figure below attempts to capture the Cornelissen viticultural environment in a single place and, in the areas of fertilization and pest management, we see that philosophy clearly demonstrated.
Frank is so committed to letting nature take its course that he has sworn off the broadly accepted Mt Etna practices of monoculture and high planting density to interplant local fruit trees with vines in pursuit of a more complex ecosystem.
The core objective of Frank's viticultural regime is the production of grapes that lead to profound wines. The practices to promote this goal include: crop management through pruning; tailoring of bunches to concentrate sugar; handpicking of defective grapes; late harvests; and multiple passes through the vineyards to ensure harvesting of fully ripened grapes.
In the cellar, Frank does not add sulfur either to combat oxidation or micro-organisms. Wines are fermented by indigenous yeasts in small, food-grade plastic tubs. To ensure vintage integrity, all yeasts resident in the cellar are killed prior to the start of wine production. Fermentation is conducted with yeasts brought in from the vineyards on the grapes.
Both white and red wines are fermented with skin contact. Red grapes are lightly pressed and then placed in large fiber glass containers, if destined for early bottling, or into epoxy-lined, underground amphoras for longer-aged wines.
Frank is so committed to letting nature take its course that he has sworn off the broadly accepted Mt Etna practices of monoculture and high planting density to interplant local fruit trees with vines in pursuit of a more complex ecosystem.
The core objective of Frank's viticultural regime is the production of grapes that lead to profound wines. The practices to promote this goal include: crop management through pruning; tailoring of bunches to concentrate sugar; handpicking of defective grapes; late harvests; and multiple passes through the vineyards to ensure harvesting of fully ripened grapes.
In the cellar, Frank does not add sulfur either to combat oxidation or micro-organisms. Wines are fermented by indigenous yeasts in small, food-grade plastic tubs. To ensure vintage integrity, all yeasts resident in the cellar are killed prior to the start of wine production. Fermentation is conducted with yeasts brought in from the vineyards on the grapes.
Both white and red wines are fermented with skin contact. Red grapes are lightly pressed and then placed in large fiber glass containers, if destined for early bottling, or into epoxy-lined, underground amphoras for longer-aged wines.
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| Underground amphoras |
The array of wines produced at the estate is shown in the two charts below.
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| Cornelissen Estate and Grand Cru Wines (Source: frankcornelissen.it) |
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| Cornelissen Premier Cru Wines (Source: frankcornelissen.it) |
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©Wine -- Mise en abyme
Like Benanti and Foti, Frank's initial focus was on native varieties; and he has continued on that path. His approach to vine-growing and winemaking, however, differed significantly from the newcomers and locals alike. This unique approach to winemaking, and the quality of his wines, has made him very respecetd among his peers and very successful in the sale of his wares.
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