Cantine Madaudo

Rosario Madaudo's legacy of wine started with a small farm back in 1945, when his great-grandfather began working their first vines in Villafranca Tirrena, a small, coastal commune on the Thyrrenian side of Messina in the northeast corner of Sicily. Today, the young winemaker assists his father, Alfio, and uncle, Andrea, oversee a thriving business that includes 20 hectares on the north slope of Mt. Etna (some 90 km away), 40 hectares in the Agrigento (on the other side of the island), and a hip wine bar devoted to bubbly attached to the winery in their hometown. What impresses Rosario the most is what happened in the years he went away to school in Milano, studying first economics and then getting a masters in food and wine communications. Upon returning home, he was amazed at how his elders had taken a small family business and added an exponential, expanding production far beyond the previous generation. He speaks excitedly both of their accomplishments and of his own desire to bring the business full circle one day by adding a small, single estate to the equation. In the meantime, he remains humble and industrious in the cellar, working alongside his younger brother, Giuseppe, cousins Maria Pia and Cristina, and also his wife Alda, whom he met in school in Milan.

A mainstay in Messina (also a mecca of Sicilian street food), sparkling wine remains a center of gravity for the Madaudo family - they produce a wide array of bubbles, spanning both traditional method and charmat. For their Grillo Cuvee, grapes are grown in the high, warm hills of the the Agrigento region. (The base wine is then transported to their bottling facility in Messina.) This first love also influenced their choice of enologists: extremely well-known in Sicily, Vito Giovinco specializes in Sicilian sparkling wine and, as it happens, himself owns vineyards in the same two areas as the Madaudo's: Sambuca di Siclia and the Contrada San Lorenzo cru on the north slope of Etna. Coincidence? Possibly... or perhaps they all know something the rest of us do not!