The Morgante family is from Grotte in the province of Agrigento in southern Sicily, where they have been growing grapes for five generations. But it is only since 1994 that Antonio Morgante and his sons have been vinifying their their own grapes. In 1997 a stroke of luck brought the wine consultant Riccardo Cotarella to the winery. He was instrumental in persuading them to stick to their roots and continue to devote themselves to producing red wines from Sicily’s king of red grapes: Nero d’Avola. Unlike many other Sicilian wineries they have continued to resist the lure of international varietals and have stuck with this single grape variety; neither do they intend to dilute the range with any white wine.
They have 200 hectares of vineyards and almond trees in a hilly region 350-500 metres above sea level, 25 kilometres from the splendid valley of the temples of Agrigento. This region is ideal for viticulture, with a Mediterranean climate and soil that ranges from clay and calcareous to marl.
Nero d’Avola is usually called Calabrese in Sicily and is thought to have been imported to the island in the course of its Hellenic colonization. As late as the 1870’s it was reportedly only really grown to a small extent in the provinces of Agrigento, Catania and Siracusa though highly regarded. After the second world war it was planted in many other parts of the island and is now Sicily’s premier indigenous grape. Morgante have on numerous occasions been cited as possibly its greatest exponents.