Mandrarossa

Mandrarossa is the top label of Cantine Settesoli, the growers' co-operative based at Menfi on the south-western coast of Sicily, in the province of Agrigento. Settesoli was founded in 1958 and is now one of the largest wine businesses on the island: around 2,000 winegrowers and 5,000 families farm some 5,700 hectares between them, growing 35 different varieties and making a little over 18 million bottles a year. That scale is worth stating plainly, because it is unusual to find a co-operative this big that also makes wine this good.

Mandrarossa is the part of Settesoli that exists to prove the point. The label was launched in 1999, after more than twenty years spent mapping the co-operative's land to work out which parcels were capable of something better, and it draws on 500 hectares of vineyard in what the growers call Menfishire: the stretch of hills running from the Magaggiaro forest at 440 metres down to the Mediterranean. It reached the market in 2000 and marked twenty-five years in 2024. Beyond Menfi the label now also takes fruit from Etna, Pantelleria and Salaparuta.

The site does a lot of the work here. The hills face south and south-west, the sun is relentless, and the sirocco arrives warm off Africa, but the sea is close enough that the breezes and the night-time drop in temperature stop the grapes cooking. Different exposures, elevations and soils give a patchwork of microclimates, which is why one estate can grow Grillo, Grecanico, Fiano and Vermentino alongside Nero d'Avola, Frappato, Perricone, Syrah, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon and make a decent job of all of them.

They have gone further than most co-operatives in studying that patchwork. In 2014 Mandrarossa began a five-year survey of its limestone soils with outside oenologists, agronomists and terroir specialists, using electroconductivity readings to find the parcels with the most potential. Two single-district wines came out of it, presented at Vinitaly in 2019.

The Grillo and the Frappato are the two I would start with, because they are the grapes that tell you where you are: Grillo is Sicily's best white variety and Frappato its lightest, most drinkable red. The Nero d'Avola is the island's flagship red grape in its everyday form, and Bonera, an equal blend of Nero d'Avola and Cabernet Sauvignon under the Menfi DOC, is the one to open when you want more weight and some barrel behind it. All four are honest, well-made wines at prices that make them worth buying by the case.

At the top of the range sit Cartagho, their old-vine Nero d'Avola, and the two single-district wines that came out of the soil survey.