Planeta Terra is not just a play on words, but a great challenge.
This is the name that we give to many of the activities and ideas which describe our present and our future, with an ethical content and a clear objective of environmental sustainability. They are protocols, behaviours and procedures which we adopt to favour the environment and are defined as our way of communicating the conscience and sense of responsibility with which we present ourselves to consumers.
Our history is the story of a journey through time and space, through Sicily from west to east, and through the five areas where today we produce our wines, our olive oils and the places of our family hospitality. A long journey which we chose in order to protect the uniqueness of the environment, the countryside and the culture with the same respect with which we explore the characteristics of the terroirs and the vineyards, enhancing the specific details of each area.
For five centuries and through seventeen generations, our family has been involved with the course of agricultural evolution in the complex land of Sicily, with an approach always inclined to openness and innovation. Where too often the agricultural world has been confined to ancient ideas of social tradition and production processes, instead we have inherited, from each generation, an instinct to change and to generate positive changes around us, both with people and in the culture.
During the 1900’s it was Grandfather Vito who showed us how, rather than in static management of the land, we must all move towards new solutions and new prospects. At Menfi first of all he transformed our small family winery into a large co-operative winery that in a short time, under Diego’s management, became a collective property and a model of local development. At the same time as being chairman of the regional institute for vines and wine, Diego contributed as chief mover in the wine making renaissance of Sicily, transforming it into a huge experimental laboratory with illustrious advisers such as Giacomo Tachis, Carlo Corino, Giampaolo Fabris and Attilio Scienza.
In the meantime we have grown. Round the old fortress of Ulmo, where for five centuries we have cultivated our oldest land, a spark was fostered to transfer this experience and all our new ideas in the project of a new company; here, in 1985, we planted our first vineyard.
Two different generations – brothers and sisters, children, nieces and nephews – work together since then, with the perfect understanding that derives not only from harmony of character and complementing of abilities, but above all from the unity of vision; love for this land, the desire to protect it and the capacity to imagine every day a new way to appreciate it.
