A Sicilian Wine Cooperative Aids the Long Haul of Earthquake Recovery

In the Valle de Belìce, an hour southwest of Palermo, agronomist Daniele Asaro scrambles up a slope to check on Francesco Ragona’s vineyards. He likes what he sees. With Asaro’s encouragement, Ragona, a fourth-generation grower, was transitioning his property to be certified organic. Asaro lingers over the Catarratto, an indigenous white grape that, at these mountain altitudes, gains the acidity to balance its natural richness. “We’re conducting a high-elevation project,” he says. “Anyone growing Catarratto from 350 meters to 600 meters up can participate.” The intent of the research, and all of Asaro’s work, is to improve grape quality, and as a result, increase profits for the growers that comprise his employer, Cantine Ermes. This part of Sicily depends on their success.

In America, where we romanticize independence, and thus independent winemakers, we tend to belittle cooperatives, thinking of them as just bulk wine producers. But Italy’s cooperatives make more than half of the country’s wine, much of it offering quality and value. Seventy percent of Cantine Ermes’ output is indeed bulk, vinified in towering tanks. But the rest goes to labels like Vento di Mare BIO, a line of fresh, young, organic wines—briny, jasmine-tea Grillo; berry-and-earth Nerello Mascalese—named for the sea breeze that brings fog and chilly nights to quench and cool dry-farmed grapes like Ragona’s.

More importantly for their regions, cooperatives are socioeconomic engines, born of the need to pool resources during scarcity.

More importantly for their regions, cooperatives are socioeconomic engines, born of the need to pool resources during scarcity. This is poignantly true of Cantine Ermes. With 2,513 growers farming 33,720 acres in Veneto, Puglia, and throughout Sicily, the co-op has grown in its quarter-century into a multi-regional force. But its past and future are linked to what its marketers call “the wounded heart” of the Valle de Belìce.

Near Ragona’s vineyards is the scar of that wound: Il Grande Cretto (The Great Crack). A five-foot-tall maze of shimmering concrete spread across 24 hillside acres, the Cretto follows former streets, its walls encasing ruins. The artist Alberto Burri created it to both erase and commemorate the town of Gibellina, leveled by an earthquake in 1968, when Salvatore Sutera was 8 years old. “First, there was shaking. My mother had pasta on the stove, and the kitchen wall was moving,” recalls Sutera, mayor of the old town’s contemporary namesake. “We fled, and that night, Gibellina fell.”

Survivors lived 14 years in temporary housing while red tape, corruption, and Mafia meddling stalled construction of Gibellina Nuova, 20 kilometers away. Finally, Sutera’s late predecessor, the charismatic Ludovico Corrao, took matters into his own hands, persuading a host of international artists and architects to build the new town as a monumental, plein air museum. Today, in a municipality of 5,000 people, there are two major museums, an important theater festival, and 67 large-scale artworks, including landmark Brutalist buildings, some left incomplete. Upkeep of it all, Sutera attests, takes resources. That’s where Cantine Ermes comes in.

“After the earthquake, many people left the area. One thing that brought them back was the possibility of this new reality, the cooperative, that allowed them to start anew.”—Rosario DiMaria

“It’s in my DNA, the earthquake,” says Rosario DiMaria, president of the cooperative, whose flagship—a spicy Nero d’Alva Riserva with balsamic undertones—is named for the disaster’s ground zero: Epicentro. One of nine young winemakers who banded together for the recovery of their region, Di Maria co-founded Cantine Ermes in 1998. “After the earthquake, many people left the area. One thing that brought them back was the possibility of this new reality, the cooperative, that allowed them to start anew.”

Cantine Ermes grew rapidly, taking in growers in locations where other cooperatives had failed. In 2008, it expanded to Veneto, and in 2018 it acquired Cantinadella Riforma Fondiaria in Puglia. “But our focus stays in Sicily. That’s where Cantine Ermes does all its work apart from the wine,” says Di Maria. As the largest employer in the area with more than 100 employees and thousands of winegrowers, “we have responsibility for our growers but also our neighbors.”

The cooperative underwrote local art restoration and overhauled the foundation that oversees the works. It supports the museums and theater festival, it operates the city’s botanical garden, and in 2017, it launched the Scirocco Wine Fest, bringing poets and writers, chefs, and producers from throughout the Mediterranean to town. When Covid halted the event, the co-op gathered Moscato vines from seven countries and, in Gibellinese fashion, planted them artistically in a semi-circle radiating from a central core, symbolizing the Mediterranean’s shared viticultural heritage. Visitors to Tenuta Oriestiadi experience Cantine Ermes’ integration of Gibellinas new and old. Set within a restored baglio, a historic Sicilian walled farmhouse, the co-op’s winery houses a barrique museum, where artworks are displayed on the heads of barrels. Tasting tours include trips to the museums and Il Grande Cretto.

As Asaro and other agronomists make their rounds to members’ vineyards, helping ensure ever-better vintages, the cooperative’s civic work is ongoing. “We have done a lot of projects together,” says Sutera, “but the earthquake was just 55 years ago.” Recovery takes generations. “Gibellina has artworks but no infrastructure to host tourists. Without that, we don’t have a lot of work here, and young people are leaving. So the cooperative that grew up here and needs more employees year after year is working with the city on a tourism plan to create opportunities in Gibellina.”

Di Maria concurs. “The project of Cantine Ermes is to have this strong link between wine and territory, and that’s something that can make a difference.”