I think that people who live here in contact with a volcano that is beautiful, but also terrifying, that brings with it this activity, also quite often earthquake activity, that it is a symbol of creativity and also of disruption. People that live here, they have a really very unique approach with their inner world. They give value to small aspects that today a lot of us, we forget. This is important. This volcano makes us in touch with the value of life and makes us humble and respectful of Mother Nature.

Etna is a super active volcano. So an active volcano is a volcano that had minimum an eruption in the last 10,000 years, but Etna has a lot of eruptions every year, sometimes 50 or 60 or more. It means that activity is incredible and all this activity creates a very special environment.

So it means that the landscape is in continuous evolution and is continuously changing, and is also neverending and a continuous source of energy. People that live here, they really feel the energy, but also the risk, and let’s say the presence of the volcano because it’s something that is a part of our daily life. A lot of time, we wake up with a big explosion of Etna, or we wake up seeing all around black ash on the soil. Or we wake up with our city full of black ash everywhere. To live on a super active volcano not only has an impact on the landscape, the soil, the vegetation, but also has a very important impact on the soul and the spirituality of people that live here.

Of course, this energy, for the population, for everyone who lives on the mountain, but also for the soil, is a very unique contribution because there is a lot of disruption, or explosive eruption, with an explosion of lapilli and black ash. So it means that a part of the soil where we cultivate vineyards or olives or everything else, is contemporary.

And then Etna is a very special environment because Etna is a place where we have 1,300 hectares of vineyard in the DOC, but we have 16,000 hectares of woods and we live in a protected park of 50,000 hectares.

And also, on the weather aspect, we have symbolically this connection. Etna is a place that is hot and cold at the same time. We have the sun of Africa, but we have the continental weather of the mountains. So Etna is in the middle between two continents and two different kinds of energies. It’s a place of paradox.

The volcano, of course, has a different period, different era of evolution. So the volcano originated, the Etna like we know today, in 100,000 years, of course. And every eruption, every era, every phase of this activity, of this volcanic activity, created a beautiful diversity.

In fact, if we see the geological map of Etna, we will see several different colors, because being such an active volcano, we had a lot of eruptions in the last 100,000 years. And that’s why we have an incredible variety of categories of soils. Very young, like hundreds of years, or older, like 50,000, 60,000 years, and everything is cultivated or grown spontaneously here.

Take also the identity of these different eras and these different eruptions, because every eruption is different, has a different identity, a different composition, a different evolution, a different timing also. And all these aspects give a different personality to every soil. That’s why Etna is magic.