In the hilly terrain of Galardo we diversify our production, maintaining the typical agricultural tradition of Roccamena and Corleone, as well as on, chickpeas, cicerchia and sulla.
Crop rotation allows the land to replace its minerals. Each crop follows different sowing and harvesting times, depending also on the weather conditions. The cultivation of the land and the harvesting operations are carried out personally by our staff, trying to avoid the hottest hours during the summer days.
The sowing of wheat takes place during the autumn season and follows the plowing of the field. In fact, even before sowing, the soil is worked in "clods" and then flattened with the appropriate agricultural machines that shatter and make the land uniform and ready to receive the seeds. The type of wheat that we have decided to cultivate is "Duilio", a type of durum wheat typical of Sicily, which has a medium-precocious age and is very resistant. Wheat is harvested through a combine at the beginning of summer, taking care to select the best beans.
Although sulla is known as spontaneous legumes, Italy is the only country in Europe where it is cultivated on significant surfaces. With a fuchsia color and bright tones, it is unique in its ability to grow and resist in every type of soil, from the most clayey to the most sandy. It is a crop that makes the soil more fertile and is sown at the end of summer on wheat stubble. The up grows until April-May. Recently we have grazed a nice flock of sheep to clean the soil of any wild herbs in order to prepare it for the next sowing.
Cicerchia is an ancient and almost forgotten legume that has been part of the Middle-Eastern agricultural heritage for centuries. Today it is typically cultivated in Asia, East Africa and a few other areas of Europe. It is a plant similar to chickpeas but small in size and is sown in January and harvested in July-August. What is consumed are its seeds that are slightly larger than peas but more crushed and contained in the pods.
Our vineyard is located in Galardo and runs along the Trapani olive grove: it consists of 12 hectares. We cultivate the indigenous varieties of grillo and zibibbo that give us excellent productions every year both in terms of quality and quantity. Grillo is a cross between zibibbo and catarratto and represents a rather recent type of grape: it was in fact created by Baron Mendola in 1874. Zibibbo has a millennial history, it has Egyptian origins and was transplanted for the first time on the island of Pantelleria from the Phoenicians. The grape takes its name from "Zabib" which in Arabic means "raisins" precisely because the wine was produced with more mature and therefore sweeter grapes. Over the past 10 years the island's winemakers have begun to vinify it in a “dry” version. We want to maintain the best vegetative balance of the plant during the year also through heart-felt pruning in autumn. In mid-April we practice the "spollonatura". During the summer, no later than June, we provide the "cimatura", that is the cutting of the shoots: this allows us to favor the formation of new leaves, that is useful for the production of new bunches.
