Sciara

Hong Kong born winemaker, Stef Yim grew up in Los Angeles where he became a sommelier at top restaurants. He quickly became fascinated with wines from volcanic soils, as it has these wines has repeatedly beat Grand Cru burgundies and other cult wines in blind tastings. He worked with a few wineries in the US, Spain and France before purchasing a plot of land in Contrada Taccione on Mount Etna and started his own winery in 2014. Stef has a unique vision of what Etna wines are: he makes wines that express the characteristics of Etna at different altitudes. His winemaking is organic and low-intervention, with natural yeast fermentation, no filtration and chemical additions. Various vessels are used depending on the terroir, grape and vintage characteristics. Wines from Sciara are labelled according to their average altitudes above sea levels: 760m, 980m and 1,200m. The soil of his vineyard is a mixture of volcanic rocks and sand at 780m, the higher it gets, the higher the content of sand, and the finer the sand particles become. Lower altitude wines are more structural, bolder and more flinty while the higher altitude ones are more refined and elegant, with great salinity and sapidity. While all of Stef’s vines are 45 years old and above, he does have very old pre-phylloxera vines in some of his vineyards. Grapes from these vines are collected for his top wine, “Centenario”.