Tanca Nica

In the Spring of 2018, I was visiting my dear friend Ceri Smith at her home on Etna. Ceri had recently flown the coup from San Francisco and rented a section of a home that was literally built inside of an old cellar that boasted a century + old Palmento in the living room. One of the first wines Ceri and I popped on that trip was a neon orange looking elixir with a clear bottle with the word "Ghirbi" hand-painted on the label. I was floored by the wine. It tasted like the slightly bubbly, fermenting juice of watermelon size grapefruit that was sitting in the sun for 3-4 days. Ceri explained this was Zibibbo and from a new, young couple making tiny amounts of wine on Pantelleria.

For the next 6 months, I sought out every bottle I could find - I found a Cuvee in Rome named Firi Firi which was a co-ferment of Cattaratto and Pignatello. And another cuvee months later that I drank with a producer partner called Nivuro Nostrale - named after the local dialect for Pignatello. I was enamored with the wines and I was dead set on getting out to visit them. That was planned for Spring of 2019, which had to be canceled for unforeseen travel changes. And then planned again for this Spring before COVID... In March, due to our continued unlucky fate, Francesco and I said fuck it and we agreed to work together and bring in the 2019 vintage without the first visit with our eyes on yet another Spring for a rendezvous in Pantelleria.

I am hoping post next Spring I will have some personal stories and knowledge to share. Until then, below is a nice little write-up from a mutual friend Giovani of wineyou.it.

Floating between Africa and Europe, immersed in a cobalt blue sea, beautiful and without frills, we find the island of Pantelleria, and here the Tanca Nica winery, is the dream of Francesco Ferreri and his wife Nicoletta. Tanca in Pantesco dialect, means small hilly land cultivated and arranged in terraces, and it is precisely that in which the vines grow, while Nica is the name of the place where the thermal waters emerge from the seabed and mix with the great Mediterranean blue. Francesco, after graduating in winemaking in Conegliano, begins to travel the world to confront himself with different working methods, until he decides to return to Pantelleria. Here he began to cultivate a small vineyard of only 2 hectares with the techniques and ancient local traditions that his grandfather taught him. Among the rows we find the Zibibbo, also known Moscato d’Alessandria, then the Pignatello, which in Pantelleria is called Nivuro Nostrale, or "black of the place", and finally the Catarratto. All the vines are bred with the classic system of small Pantelleria saplings and do not see chemical additives, nor herbicides, nor insecticides, but only when green beans and wheat are planted in alternate rows to protect the vines from strong spring winds. In the cellar the grapes are de-stemmed by hand, with the aid of a net, and pressed with the feet, the fermentation is spontaneous with only indigenous yeasts without fining and filtration and no type of additive is used, not even sulfur. Tanca Nica's wines are direct and straightforward, free and pure, and carry within them the sun of Pantelleria.