Cottanera 3 Items

In its essence, the story of the Cottanera winery is about a return to one’s roots. The story begins with Francesco Cambria, who, in 1962, seeking a retreat from his career in Messina, bought 100 hectares of vines and hazelnut groves near his birthplace in Randazzo. Francesco cultivated hazelnuts and also initially sold grapes to the local cooperative, but with the arrival of DOC status for Etna in 1968 and hazelnuts losing market share, he soon decided to focus on grape growing for bulk wine production, replanting the hazelnut groves to vines. In the late 1980s, Francesco’s son Guglielmo decided to build a winery to make his own wine, rather than selling the grapes, and he was quite successful selling it “sfuso” in demijohns to local consumers and restaurants. The initial success of these wines pushed Guglielmo to point on quality wine production, so in the mid-1990s, he renovated his father’s vineyards to increase density and lower yields, and the first wines labeled as Cottanera were born.