Let's discover the Palmento Costanzo brand: here is our interview

The Palmento Costanzo Winery is a Sicilian winery whose land falls within the Etna Park, demonstrating how these lands can give unique scents and colors. And, in fact, the Palmento Costanzo wines seem to be a balanced mix of the richness of the territory and the immense love for the winemaking tradition. And it is precisely on the Etna territory that the Costanzo family in 2010 undertook their project to recover the territorial viticultural heritage, restoring the terraced vineyards of poignant beauty and an ancient millstone to be used as a cellar.

The Palmento Costanzo company has been able to find the right meeting point between tradition and quality. The wine produced is the great expression of the potential of the Etna territory, whose climatic and morphological peculiarities make it possible to obtain fruits rich in aromas and nuances. A magical environment of earth, water, air and fire, make this territory a treasure chest of extraordinary biodiversity, unique in the world, fertile and particularly suitable for agriculture and the cultivation of vines.
Il Palmento is located in Contrada Santo Spirito, on the northern side of Etna, and was created by the will of the Costanzo family to recover the old building and cellar dating back to the middle of the 18th century.

We like these artisans, these producers of unique, certified and award-winning delicacies: they are real treasures embedded in our Peninsula between seas and mountains and in the most remote streets of villages and countryside. We don't stop to experience only their products, but we want to discover more closely the protagonists of this brand. That's why we sent some questions to those who manage communication with us.

Stay with us and get to know Palmento Costanzo: read the answers!

• Who are we talking to?
  I'm Valeria Agusta, owner
  
• Is the company family run? What year was the company founded and who was the founder?
  Yes, the company is family owned and operated and was founded in 2010.
  
• Who was the founder and what was his training or what is the branch of work and professional from which he came if different from the current one?
  Our story began in 2010 in Passopisciaro, a hamlet of Castiglione di Sicilia, inside an ancient nineteenth-century millstone, restored through a conservative project, conducted according to the principles of bioarchitecture.
  
• What is the real reason or the triggering fact behind the birth of this company and when did it happen?
  Everything stems from the passion for wine and for the inexhaustible desire to enhance our land and that wealth of memories generated by Etna.
  
• What is your relationship with the land of origin and its typicality? And why do you want to tell them with your products?
  With commitment and respect, we want to pay homage to the first winemakers who woven the history of Etna viticulture through the enhancement of Actoctone vines cultivated manually in organic sapling.
  
• What was the first product you created?
  The first product we created was the Nero di Sei 2011. Son of a warm year.
  
• What is the product that today, on the other hand, do you consider “top”?
  Our wine produced from pre-phylloxera vineyards: Prephylloxsera Etna DOC 2016. A wine that takes us back to the late 19th century, to a situation that has marked the history of viticulture: the invasion of phylloxera, an insect from America that destroyed almost 70% of the European vineyard.
  In some cases, however, the vines were able to resist the phylloxera invasion thanks to the particular soil and climate characteristics of the volcano, especially the soil composed of volcanic sand, which have allowed this vineyard to live for a long time and, today, to be able to give us a wine of great intensity.
  
• And what is the product that in the entire history of the company has most carried with it the beating heart, philosophy and soul of the company itself?
  The Contrada Santo Spirito, a wine that comes from the selection of the oldest vines we have in the company and bears the name of the district to which it belongs. With its depth of understanding of the territory, it tells the authentic soul of the north side of the volcano and the belonging to Etna as a terroir of great history and cultural strength, highlighting the pedoclimatic difference that every corner of the volcano holds.
  Since 2016 we decided to vinify separately, but in the same way, the three areas of our vineyard where the old vines are located, creating three different wines that take their name from the particles (cadastral registration) of the vineyard from which they are born: 466, 468 and 464. Wines that demonstrate the explainable relationship between Nerello Mascalese and the Etna terroir through the extraordinary diversity of a wine produced from three areas of the same vineyard.
  
• Let's talk about today: how big has the company grown since its inception? Can we get some numbers?
  We started with 6 hectares around the ancient millstone in Contrada Santo Spirito, in the village of Passopisciaro, on the northern side of Etna. Today we cultivate 18 hectares of vineyards and 6 of olive groves following the principles of organic agriculture in other Etna districts, especially Contrada Feudo di Mezzo and Contrada Cavaliere.
  
• Right now: more tradition or more innovation?
  Both, but in the right balance: this has always been our business philosophy.
  
• What was the most important evolution of the company to get it to what it is today?
  The most important evolution of the company was the various efforts to restore the more than one hundred year old terraced vineyards and an ancient millstone to be used as a cellar.
  
• Speaking instead of the future: what tomorrow will the company wait for? Are there any changes or some new evolutionary process planned?
  Our research is constant, we want to have the best results in every aspect: at the moment we are creating a nursery within the company to maintain the genetic and historical heritage of our vines over one hundred years old.
  
• Are you planning to create new products?
  We have two new projects coming soon: the production of sparkling wines and the production of wines on the south-west side of Etna, in Contrada Cavaliere.
  
• Having focused on Spaghetti
  S&M