THE COLORS OF THE DRYING PROCESS
The Zibibbo Grape Harvest in the Borgo Guarini Estate
Summer is the grape harvest season, as everybody probably knows, and Firriato is working on it in 3 different areas, always in time. The first grape ready to mature is the Zibibbo one, in the Borgo Guarini estate within the Trapani countryside, between the 2° and 3°week of August: the sunkissed bunches shine like golden gems enchanting also the most absent-minded person, thanks to their natural beauty so precious and delicate that require a manual harvest in order to enhance the integrity of the fruit. The most interesting step to observe the process comes later, when grapes are placed on rush mattings for a certain perion, normally between 20 and 40 days.
The drying garden
The drying garden is a place located in the Borgo Guarini estate. Time runs in this vineyard but It stops instantly as if by magic. We can perceive time going by admiring the drying process on the grapes: they change the color, losing their weight, becoming amber with wrinkly features, as a guy becoming old so suddenly. However, this is the way we have to identify the paradox behind the garden, in this small corner of Sicily, where an ancient technique keeps on being carried out also today, as a sympol of lost ages.
L’Ecrù
L’Ecrù is a natural passito, son of the drying process of grapes and the particular vinification of them by the Method of infusion: dried grapes are put into infusion in a base wine. The wrinkly, scented, ambered grapes swims in the late harvest wine in a quantity that change according to the vintage. A particular method making the difference of Firriato’s production style in the international winescape. On the nose, you perceive all the intense fragrances of Mediterranean shrubland, disclosing fruity and flowery notes and great balance: a taste of L’Ecrù is just like to taste the whole Sicily.
