Etna has passed within the last two millenniums, it passed very high periods, as well, very low periods. It was a very popular area for wine with the Greeks and the Romans. And it was probably the biggest area of production of wine between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century when they were producing on Etna around 40 million liters of wine. Right now, we are producing three to four. So it was huge. It was 10 times what we produce now. And as well, there were very, very sad moments. One of the saddest, probably the lowest moments that Etna touched, it was really in the eighties, in the same period when Salvo Foti and Benanti restarted Etna.

And this was the period when the European community didn’t allow us to use the palmento anymore. Here, every single vineyard had its own palmento and these palmentos were sized for the vineyard. The palmento, it was the facility, it was the cellar where the wine we used was made. And it was pressed with a traditional press, with a very big wood and a weight. And everyone was making wine for their own consumption.

But in the eighties, due also to some other scandals, this was not allowed anymore. And this actually, since there weren’t any facilities here to make wine, just made the vineyards get abandoned. So in the eighties, in the early nineties, you could purchase a vineyard just paying the notary act, because managing a vineyard was much more expensive than anything you could get from it. So people were just leaving their vineyards because they didn’t have any way to take care of the fines. And this really was very sad, actually it was unreasonable, because on Etna, we have been doing vinification of wine in palmento and in over 2,000 years nobody has died from the wine from the palmento.

And so, it was meaningless. Anyway, what is good is that there is a movement that wants to take back this tradition. Already Salvo Foti does wine in palmento. At I Custodi, I will renovate my palmento at the cellar and I will do my palmento wine in the cellar from the next vintage. And this is, I think, important. It’s absolutely necessary because this is a tradition that we should never ever lose.