Arianna Occhipinti is one of our favorite producers of Sicilian wine. And of Italian wine. And of natural wine.

Why did Occhipinti become a star? Is it the cool wax tops and funky labels? Her personal charisma? Those help of course. But the real reason--and the only reason her fame has lasted--is the wines themselves.

Arianna's wines are amazing on multiple levels. She proved that natural wines with pure fruit don’t come just from Beaujolais. Italy can make them too. Even Sicily, which for years seemed to produce only supermarket wine.

She also proved that what unites great natural wines isn't any particular flavor of naturalness, but their purity. Their ability to express their unique identity with a clarity and a vibrancy that makes drinking them more like communing with a foreign land and culture than just having a glass of wine.

So her wines don't have fruit anything like the great Beaujolais path-breakers of natural wine. Her wines have Sicily's gushing fruit (it's warmer than in Beaujolais!), balanced by just enough acidity and an undertone of minerality. Her Frappato has a salty undercurrent that balances the warm fruit and the granite minerality. It's a legendary food wine, especially with red sauce made tangy with anchovies. And her white wine manages to be at once a fresh and beautifully lime-inflected sipper and a genuine wine of terroir.

What importer Bowler Wine has to say about this wine...

100% Frappato. The three different wines in this limited-production 6-pack are all Frappato, vinified and aged identically to demonstrate the distinctions amongst the three different contrade or districts. There have been 3 vintages so far: 2016, 2017 and 2019. Contrada names are not permitted on Sicilian wine labels, so each name is represented by a two-letter abbrevation--"BB" for Bomboliere, "PT" for Pettineo and "FL" for Fossa di Lupo--with each being cheekily struck through with a line to emphasize their illicitness. The farming is certified-organic with biodynamic practices. Harvest is by hand. The bunches are mostly destemmed with the berries left whole. Fermentation is spontaneous with native yeasts in 20-hectoliter concrete tanks with a maceration of 2-3 weeks and occasional punchdowns. The wines are aged in concrete for about 22 months and bottled without fining or filtration. Sulfur use is minimal.