{"title":"Aldo Viola","description":"\u003cp\u003eBefore he made wine, Aldo Viola played professional football and traveled from Denmark to India to the Amazon. He came home to Alcamo to do one thing entirely his own way.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eViola is a fourth-generation grower whose family worked vines in western Sicily before him, back through his father Don Ancilino, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather. He returned to Sicily in 1996, studied enology in Marsala, and became the first winemaker for the Centopassi cooperative, which farms land confiscated from the Corleonesi mafia. That grounding in honest, socially minded farming carried into his own labels, which are very much a one-man affair, with his brother Alessandro also bottling separately.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMore on how they farm and work in the cellar in our \u003ca href=\"\/blogs\/natural-wine-producers-primal-wine\/aldo-viola-iconoclast-of-western-sicily\"\u003eAldo Viola producer profile\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"saignee-rosso-nerello-mascalese-aldo-viola-sicily-italy-natural-wine","title":"Aldo Viola Saignee Rosso Nerello Mascalese 2017","description":"\u003cp\u003eAldo Viola's Saignee Rosso is 100% Nerello Mascalese sourced from a coastal vineyard plot located roughly 30 kilometers from his home base in Alcamo, in the province of Trapani. The vines sit at approximately 350 meters above sea level and face into the sirocco winds that blow from the south, creating a hot, arid microclimate with conditions more similar to northern Africa than to most Italian wine country. The soils here are calcareous clay, distinct from the iron-rich sandy-clay Timpi Rossi soils near Alcamo where Aldo's white varieties grow.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe name Saignee refers to the winemaking approach: a light skin maceration followed by a bleed-off of free-run juice, producing a wine that sits somewhere between a deep rosé and a pale red. Fermentation takes place with indigenous yeasts in stainless steel. The 2017 is aged in stainless steel and bottled without fining or filtering. Sulfites are present in trace amounts only.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNerello Mascalese delivers naturally high acidity and restrained tannin regardless of where it is grown in Sicily. Here, grown in a coastal rather than volcanic context, the grape shows lifted red fruit, a notable saline edge, and an herbal character that reflects the wind-buffeted terrain. The wine is classified as Terre Siciliane IGP, the broad regional designation that allows Aldo flexibility outside the narrower Alcamo DOC rules.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt 12% ABV, this is a genuinely light red — one that rewards a slight chill and drinks well through a meal rather than demanding food.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aldo Viola","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":13046782165047,"sku":"AVIOSAIG17C","price":34.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0019\/3363\/9735\/files\/aldo-viola-saignee-natural-wine.png?v=1780686419"}],"url":"https:\/\/primalwine.com\/collections\/aldo-viola.oembed","provider":"Primal Wine","version":"1.0","type":"link"}