A new viticultural model for Sicily
With the aim of preserving the productive stability of the Sicilian wine industry in the face of climate change, Colomba Bianca, one of the largest producers of organic wines in Italy, has since last year set up an Observatory, open to institutions and wineries on the island, to monitor climate trends and share know-how, involving professionals on the subject at national level. Among them is Luca Mercalli, president of the Italian Meteorological Society and scientific journalist. “We are trying to move towards a model of sustainable agriculture,” comments Mattia Filippi of Uvasapiens, Colomba Bianca’s consultant oenologist, “by increasing biodiversity and organic matter in the soil: complex agricultural models involving the cultivation of forests and wider ecological contexts. I have christened it ‘Vitecology‘ and it is the union between the horizons of the new viticulture and ecological trends, to counter phenomena arising from climatic misalignments: desertification, drought, chemical and physical instability of the soil’.
Read the full article with statements by Luca Mercalli and Mattia Filippi here