COS

The Free Bacchus Story

In 1980 three school friends, Giambattista Cilia, Cirino Strano and Giusto Occhipinti, had a few months to fill before university. Cilia's father let them have an old, half-ruined winery and three and a half hectares of old bush vines near Vittoria, and they set out to make wine without any particular idea of what they were doing. Their initials are the name.

What they found over the following forty years is that Cerasuolo di Vittoria, Sicily's only DOCG, and its two permitted grapes were capable of far more than the region assumed. The farm is certified organic, checked by the same certifier, Suolo e Salute, since 2010. It also follows biodynamic ideas and brews some of its own preparations, but holds no biodynamic certificate. In 2000 COS began making wine in clay amphorae. Occhipinti had decided new oak was not the way to show what Vittoria had to offer, and went looking for a vessel that would add nothing of its own. He found his model in Georgia, where wine has long been made in clay jars.

Occhipinti's account of 1991 is that talking about skin-macerated whites got you written off as a crank. White wine made that way now has a name of its own, orange wine, and in 1991 almost nobody had heard of it.

Pithos Rosso, the red they make in those amphorae, earned 93+ points from Wine Advocate for its 2017 vintage. Rami, a white, spends about a week on its skins, the way COS has made its whites since 1991. The Cerasuolo di Vittoria Classico is the more structured expression of the same farming.

Cerasuolo di Vittoria is a blend, and it is easier to enjoy once you know what each half is doing. Nero d'Avola is the darker, firmer grape and gives the wine its body. Frappato is pale and perfumed and gives it lift. Together they make a red that is light on its feet in a way Sicilian wine is not supposed to be: red cherry and orange peel, a savoury turn at the end, and enough acidity to cut straight through tomato and oil. It is the island's only DOCG, Italy's strictest tier, and when COS began in 1980 its founders knew of only one producer still making it.

Polaner Selections, its American importer, calls COS one of the most influential producers in all of Sicily, and some of that influence stayed in the family. In 1998 Giusto brought his niece Arianna Occhipinti, then sixteen, to help at Vinitaly, Italy's big wine fair. She now makes her own wine nearby.