© 2023 Tenute Senia Wine
Our story
Chiaramonte Gulfi 18 04 1902
It all began with my grandfather who said to me: Who is at Sénia?
I was busy playing with the "strummula” and happily replied: How nice, Grandpa, a new game!!! I was still very little and I didn't understand what my grandfather wanted to tell me. He replied: One day I will take you with me. This same question was always an enigma for the children of our family.
Even now, at the family Sunday lunch, my grandfather once came to me and asked me the same question. I was thirty and replied: Grandpa, but that's the name of our district. He laughed, happy with my naivety, and began to tell me this story.
Our estates are called Senia in the ancient area of “Murtidda” in Sicilian, because even in '43 among the vineyards and olive trees this plant, the wild myrtle, still grew, now almost extinct throughout the area, and there was a basin of water that allowed the fields to be irrigated. And it was there that my father, back in about 1960, left me the first lands where I could produce my wine. But before all this, we need to go back a hundred years.
In 1850 my great-grandfather Biagio was a wealthy baron and landowner, he had land in Ganzeria, about 80 hectares, with centuries-old olive trees, and 20 hectares of land in Murtidda with vineyards a hundred years old. Those were good times, they made oil and wine, and through the Carretteri these raw materials were taken around Sicily. Great-grandfather Biagio, by then a widower, really liked to go once a month with his employees as well. The wine and oil were left in the shops and in the Fondaco “U Funnicu” where the carters could stay with their horses.
In 1860, a Fondaco was also opened in Enna so that the carters could refresh themselves and rest. Unfortunately, on one of these trips he fell ill, died, and left everything to his son Carmelo. At the age of 5 or 6, Carmelo found himself with a rich inheritance that he could not manage, being too young. Little by little, the relatives divided up the land, houses, wine press, and oil mill among themselves, and little Carmelo was left with nothing; he grew up with an aunt and at eighteen became a soldier. When he returned, without assets or property, he went back to his aunt. When he was already 50 years old, this aunt died and Carmelo inherited 5 hectares of vineyard.
It was already 1890 and Carmelo began to work his own vineyards, looked for a wife and got married. He had 4 daughters and 2 sons. (Lucia Vannina, Pippina and Rosina) (Biagio and Salvatore). In 1896 Salvatore was born, who soon began working in the fields with his father, learning the art of pruning and grafting. They were skilled "Nzitaturi” grafting experts and were called throughout Sicily. With the money they earned, they gradually bought other vineyards and the houses of Murtidda, a strategic point near the main road Vittoria-Cannamellito-Pantaleo-Licodia Eubea-Catania (now S.p. 5).
In 1920, Salvatore inherited all the properties from his father, about 6 thousand vineyards. He got married and had 3 children, in order: in '24 Emanuela, in '33 Carmelo, and in '34 Giovanna. Carmelo too, like his father, started working in the vineyards when he was very young; he learned how to take care of the vines, to prune and graft them. They made wine with their father and sold it in their own buildings.
It was a beautiful time, the grape harvest, if you think that on September 28, 1930, it was Mussolini himself who proclaimed the “Day of the Grape” to encourage the consumption of local wine, at a time when the regime was flaunting an anti-alcohol policy. Meanwhile, the father divided all the properties among the children: the daughters received the houses in the city and the son Carmelo received the land.
In '56 Carmelo married Angela and had 3 children. Following family tradition, the sons took up their father's work from a young age, and with their earnings they began to buy land in Senia, an area rich in water with a calcareous subsoil along the s.p5. Senia is a district of Roccazzo, a hamlet where as early as 1341 pieces of land with wells and wine presses were sold. Thus, the name "Roccarzo" defined a type of land suited for vineyards. In '66 he bought his first plot of land in Senia, where he built a well and gradually bought the neighboring lands with vineyards a hundred years old, all bush-trained with trunks sturdy enough to sit on and rest. In '68 the wine press in Senia was purchased with 6 “fossi,” the ancient vats. 4 vats for fermenting the must, 2 vats with foot-operated presses; usually the grapes were crushed with iron-shod boots. From the vat, the must passed to the ancient press "Ammobile"—immobile, with the screw planted a meter underground—and then returned again to the fermentation vat.
In ancient times, before putting the must into wooden barrels, it was filtered by hand in the “Cruvedda” , a basket made of reeds. At that time there were 14 wooden barrels of 25 and 20 hl and 2 wooden barrels of 50 hl. Those were hard years, the cellar was in the old houses and the wine press in Senia, the children still small always helped their father, but a solution had to be found. Carmelo, in the years '78-'80, thought of selling the buildings and the wooden barrels in order to buy the ancient palace of Senia attached to the wine press already purchased. After buying the ancient palace, since it could not be renovated, it was demolished and buildings with an adjoining cellar were built all around the wine press.
Another cellar was built near the entrance to have an initial sales point. During those same years, bush-trained vineyards were uprooted and replaced with trellised vineyards. In keeping with farming tradition, the stakes for the vineyards were made at home. Between the 1980s and 1990s, the first stainless steel silos were purchased, in '95 the hydraulic motorized presses and modern destemming-crushing machines.
© 2023 Tenute Senia Wine