Tenute Ballasanti

Tenute Ballasanti

Manuela Seminara’s Return to the family land, in San Giovanni Montebello, on the slope of Etna that looks at the sunrise over the sea, where she was born and raised.
A Turning Point, too. Her husband Fabio, looking to the future, reunites the dispersed properties and, together with Manuela, they give life to a new Agricultural Company, looking at ten vintages, new vineyards and a cellar to design and build.
The Return and the Turning Point, a loving synergy determined to produce straight and disruptive wines, like the Thunder inside the Earth. The winemaking activity was started by Manuela’s maternal great-grandfather, Don Lorenzo and his wife Donna Mara.
Don Lorenzo also planted two maritime pines in memory of the birth of his children.
They shaded Donna Mara when, in the days of Grecale, she said that even the Saints were dancing there, so much the wind blew.
At that time, Don Lorenzo’s wine reached, as per tradition, the French market. But it was Don Angelo, her son, who diversified it:
on the property there was every good thing that God sent to Etna: citrus fruits, olives, figs and prickly pears, strawberry trees, chestnuts, pomegranates and quinces. Even a grove of maple trees. And grapes, of course, wine grapes (Nerello Mascalese and Carricante) that he sold to his most expensive customers.
It was he, with his example, who made Manuela’s emotional and cultural roots sink into the slopes of the Volcano. Then he repeated the operation with her husband Fabio, who chose this as his chosen Land. Ten years ago, the Turning Point. Fabio, with the proven managerial attitude of the man
who sees far, understands that it is time to make a decision.
Fabio decides to reunite the original Winery to revive Manuela’s dream. Their adventure begins, they hire staff and invest in the purchase of new land, always on the eastern side of the volcano, to watch their sunrise over the sea. Thus the first wines curated by Manuela are re-born, the vineyards are expanded, new ones are also purchased with traditional Nerello Mascalese bush vines.
Today, the property is about 25 hectares, of which 7.5 are Nerello Mascalese and Carricante, in three locations, from which five labels are born, two of which are CRU.
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Ballasanti production is concentrated on three monovarietals and two Crus, also of Nerello Mascalese for the Red and Carricante for the White. Ballasanti avails itself of the collaboration of Luca Caramellino, a Piedmontese winemaker, who recognizes himself in the poetry of the Ballasanti project and on the slopes of Etna has found bread for his undoubted experience and vision.