Pithos Bianco Cos Giusto Occhipinti 2016/17 (Skin Contact White)

Pithos Bianco Cos, Orange Wine, Biodynamic wine, 100% Grecanico, lovely Sicilian flavours. Pithos Bianco is a cuvée where the grapes are macerated with the skins. The wine is fermented in amphora and manages to be both supple and rounded in the mouth but at the same time grippy, spicy and herbal. Pithos Bianco is quite soft and understated with some floral notes meld into white, yellow stone fruits, peaches and savoury herbs. There are some saline notes and the wine is underpinned by excellent freshness and acidity. It also benefits from relatively low alcohol.

COS was started by Giusto Occhipinti with two classmates back in the early 1980s. On a shoestring budget, the three friends vinified the grapes from their parents' vineyards. After experimenting with toasty oak and big flavours from over-ripe Nero d'Avola, they quickly realised that it wasn't the direction they wanted to go in. They then took a step back and started favouring concrete and amphorae. Their winemaking too changed, from modernism to non-interventionist wine making. Now they are well established as one of Sicily's leading exponents of biodynamic production and make wines of freshness and aromatic expression. COS does not use selected yeasts and has never used chemicals in the vineyards.