Cornelissen

The Free Bacchus Story

On the northern face of Etna there are vines that were never grafted onto American rootstock, because phylloxera could not survive the volcanic soil. They are pre-phylloxera plants, surviving in isolated plots at altitude, and for most of the twentieth century almost nothing serious was being made from them.

Frank Cornelissen, a Belgian former wine merchant, arrived in 2000 having concluded that the combination of volcanic soil, ungrafted old vines and the mountain's enormous day-to-night temperature swing amounted to one of the great terroirs on earth. The farming he established is certified organic and the winemaking is about as non-interventionist as the climate permits — no additives, often no sulphur, vinification in clay and fibreglass.

That approach produces genuine disagreement, and it would be dishonest to smooth it over. Some vintages show the volcanic precision his supporters consider among the most distinctive in Italy; earlier ones showed the instability that comes with working without a safety net in a difficult climate. The recent record has tilted decisively toward the former, which is what a producer learning their site looks like from the outside.

Cornelissen has said the real obstacle to making wine without additives is that the knowledge of how to do it had disappeared. He arrived from Belgium without a winemaking background and had to fail his way back to a lost method.

What that farming puts in the glass is worth stating plainly, because it is not a polished wine and is not trying to be. Etna's red grape, Nerello Mascalese, is pale and lighter-framed than Sicily's reputation suggests, and here it arrives at full volume: red fruit, wood ash, a faintly metallic edge like iron, and a grip that closes the mouth rather than coating it. Made without additives and often without sulphur, it can also turn up shut and need air before it says much of anything. That is the trade for the intensity, and the whole objection for anyone who would rather a wine simply behaved.

Magma, from the highest ungrafted plots, has drawn 97 points from Wine Advocate. It is one of a small number of Italian wines that has created collector demand from people who had never previously thought about Sicily at all.