A fine bunch of grapes of Grillo variety.The Grillo grape gives Mamertino white wine its distinctive taste.

Mamertino

This is a wine which was recorded as far back as Roman times. There are copious records on Marmetino dating back to 289 BC. Mamertino was planted in the area of Milazzo and the surrounding hills in the neighbourhood of the communes of Santa Lucia del Mela and Meri'.

It was described as: ''a praiseworthy grape variety for the production of a praiseworthy wine''.
A warm, generous and highly drinkable wine,it was offered to the followers of Julius Ceasar at banquets including the celebrations for his third consulship, and was mentioned in ''The Gallic Wars''.
The noble and historic origins of Mamertino, passed down by word of mounth on the land from which it came, indicate a wine which was showered with honors, prized and aristocratic that, furthermore, towered over its contemporaries in ancient and modern times. Strabone, the revered Roman geographer counted the Mamertino among the best wines of the time and Pliny placed it in fourth place in his classification of 195 wines, while the Frenchman Andrè Tehernia, in his book, '' The wine of Roman Italy '' described Mamertino as '' the fourth grand cru classé''.

Again Marziale wrote: '' ...Mamertino is indisputably the name that comes to mind''.
You bet it is one of the finest wines! Prof T.Paulsen writes of Mamertino in 1930 that this is one of, ''The typical wines of the area''. He describes it as ' '...the true, authentic product of the lands along the Messina coastline of the Tyrrhenian Sea. In more recent times, the 1942 edition of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture's classification and price list of wines mentions Mamertino. Veronelli in his book on ''The Wines of Italy'' praises Mamertino as, ' ' ...full bodied and fragrant''.

This is the history of Mamertino which is produced today according to traditional viticultural methods and modern vinification techniques at the Azienda Agricola Vasari at Santa Lucia del Mela .

For more information and bibliography on Mamertino wine and its history, you can email Ruggero Vasari directly at: azienda@biovinivasari.it