The vision of a Lipari producer who entered the winemaking world from a consulting background: “Small is beautiful, but with projects that are also economically sustainable.”
I rented a scooter and hung a hundred marker-written signs around the island: “Wanted: land with or without vines”: Massimo Lentsch, a consultant in the world of internationalization services for SMEs, explains how he founded Tenuta di Castellaro on the island of Lipari, the largest of the Aeolian Islands in Sicily. “I was on vacation on a boat and was dazzled by the sunset, by the landscape,” Lentsch explains. “For a long time, I had wanted to create a product, a good, and what better thing could I do than wine.” Tenuta di Castellaro is now a 24-hectare winery with around 85,000 bottles a year, mostly sold abroad through the HoReCa channels. A cutting-edge winery with a wine resort and the Cave di Caolino geomineral park, cleaned and reclaimed.
It took years of research and investment to achieve this goal. It all began in 2005. “We uprooted and replanted everything because there were no native vines, and we were also faced with native vines affected by latent viruses—that is, sickly plants that wouldn’t have lived long. I was able to count on the assistance of Salvo Foti, an agronomist and oenologist specializing in volcanic soils, with whom we toured the seven Aeolian Islands, searching for and rediscovering ancient vines like Coringo Nero and Malvasia.” Bianco Pomice and Rosso Ossidiana, two of the winery’s labels, evoke the territory in their names and flavors. At 350 meters above sea level. Lentsch, founder of DLike, is the entrepreneur who acquired the Il Cantante estate, on the slopes of Mount Etna, from Simple Red singer Mick Hucknall. His opinion on dealcoholized wines.
