On Friday 15 May at 15:00 one hundred and fifty journalists from the regional, national and foreign press connected directly to Zoom to participate in Sicilia En Primeur Global Webinar. The event, promoted by Assovini Sicilia which for 17 years has brought together the technical and specialized press in May, but also journalists from the generalist, tourism and customs press to taste Sicilian wines in preview, took place in this 2020 edition in the name of digitalization, in order to recount despite the ongoing health crisis the characteristics of the 2019 vintage and the Sicilian wine numbers. During the meeting Alessio Planeta , President of Assovini Sicilia, Antonio Rallo , President of the DOC Sicily Consortium, and Mattia Filippi , oenologist and founding consultant of Uva Sapiens, to whom the association has already entrusted the technical presentation of the new vintage. During the video conference, the word was given to the great Sicilian restaurant, represented by the two-star Chef Pino Cuttaia , President of Le Soste di Ulisse and patron of La Madia. As presented by Filippi, production in 2019 in Sicily stands at around 4.3 million hectoliters, on average over the past 5 years. Together with the 2014 and 2011 vintages, the latest harvest is the third least in terms of the amount of harvest in the last 10 years. One of the keywords that guided and guides the spirit and strategies of Sicilian producers has been and is sustainability and this is also demonstrated by the growing number of wineries that adhere to voluntary protocols or sustainability-related certifications. Intimately linked to the concept of sustainability is the concept of organic. Sicily today represents 34% of the Italian organic area , followed by Puglia which stands at 16-17%. Note the data relating to the climate in Sicily which is not particularly affected by the rise in average temperatures due to climate change. Sicily in 2019 did not in fact undergo temperature rises compared to the average of the last 30 years. From a point of view of the trend of temperatures in the period involving the cultivation of vines, therefore from March to October, temperatures were significantly below the average of the last 15 years and an average high rainfall compared to the last few years, but less high than to 2018. This obviously led to a strong delay in budding and above all a flowering with a poor fruit set, resulting in very low average production. Generally speaking, the 2019 vintage was balanced with exceptional points, especially with reference to the white berried varieties and brings extremely interesting wines to the bottle both from an aromatic point of view and from a phenolic maturation point of view.
The traditional partnership with UniCredit has also been confirmed for the 2020 digital edition of Sicilia En Primeur, which for years has supported the event as main sponsor. Furthermore, UniCredit on this occasion provided the press with a study on the wine sector in which Sicily confirmed its top quality and a report on the impact of Covid-19 on the Italian wine sector.
Assovini Sicilia is an association that brings together 91 Sicilian wineries of small, medium or large sizes, united by three elements: total control of the wine supply chain, from the vineyard to the bottle; the production of quality bottled wine; the international vision of the market.
