Officina del Vento Grillo 2024

The Land

Most people know Marsala as a fortified wine for cooking. The land around it tells a different story. Officina del Vento farms a single hectare of Grillo inside the Isole dello Stagnone nature reserve on Sicily's western tip, a shallow lagoon lined with salt pans and windmills, where the vineyard looks straight out at the sea. The wind here almost never stops, which is where the project gets its name, the "wind workshop." The soils are sandy clay over a calcareous plateau. The Stagnone was once prized as a source of top Marsala base wine, then largely abandoned as growers aged out. The salt, the sand and the constant air are why this Grillo from Sicily tastes as much of the coast as of the grape.

The Wine

The Officina del Vento Grillo 2024 is 100% Grillo. It was fermented and aged 75% in stainless steel and 25% in new French oak barrels from Tonnellerie Tremeaux, then left on the lees for 10 months with regular stirring before bottling in July 2025. The steel keeps the citrus sharp, and the lees work and small share of barrel add weight and a fine phenolic grip without any obvious wood. The founders put it plainly: they want you to taste the grape and the sea, not the oak. Grapefruit, lime zest and yellow apple, a salty, iodine edge, then a juicy, taut body and a long, saline finish. 2024 was a drought year across Sicily, and the Marsala zone was hit hardest, with yields down about 30%, but the Grillo that survived came in fully ripe. Just 4,919 bottles were made.

The People

Officina del Vento is the work of three of Italy's Masters of Wine: Gabriele Gorelli, who in 2021 became the first Italian to earn the title, Andrea Lonardi and Pietro Russo, the country's third MW, who also works as an enologist at Donnafugata and oversees the winemaking here. The three bought an old Grillo vineyard overlooking the Stagnone in autumn 2022, drawn by the sunsets, the wind and the old vines, and made their first vintage in 2023, just 4,176 bottles. The vineyard is farmed organically. The aim, they say, is not profit but to give a future to a coastline that suits fine wine and was left behind. They also helped launch the Salt West association to promote the landscape of vines and salt pans together.

Food Pairing

A Sicilian white wine this salty wants seafood. Grill whole branzino and dress it with olive oil, lemon and capers, and let the wine's citrus do the work of another squeeze of lemon. Pasta with sardines, wild fennel, pine nuts and raisins, the Palermo classic, meets the wine's lees texture with its own richness. Raw red prawns or oysters with a little sea salt echo the iodine edge. Or keep it simple with fried calamari and aioli, where the acidity cuts the fry. This is the bottle to open when you want your kitchen to smell like the Mediterranean on a Wednesday night.