Eduardo Torres Acosta
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9 products
Eduardo Torres Acosta, a young winemaker from the Canary Islands, began working with vines on his father’s small lot of land in Tenerife. . In 2012, Eduardo relocated to Sicily, becoming an intern at Azienda Arianna Occhipinti. Soon afterward, he got a job as the enologist at Azienda Passopisciaro, one of the pioneers of Etna's new wave of producers.
Despite Eduardo’s "outsider" status, he rented several prime parcels on Etna from locals. Until the 2017 vintage, he would harvest the grapes, then truck them to Arianna Occhipinti’s estate in Vittoria. Since the winemaking facility was not on Etna, the wines were not allowed DOC status and simply carried the IGT Terre Siciliane designation. In 2018, Eduardo converted a small Etna garage into a winery but has opted to keep the wines IGT.
Today, Eduardo farms eight small parcels, 4.5 hectares in total. The primary volume of production is a wine called Versante Nord, produced in both white and red. Both wines are sourced from six parcels totaling less than two hectares on the cooler, north-facing side of Mt. Etna at elevations ranging from 750 to 950 meters. In traditional style, the vineyards are mixed plantings of various local varieties. The red grapes include mainly Nerello Mascalese with Nerello Cappuccio, Alicante, Garnacha, and others; the whites include Minella, Catarratto, Grecanico, Carricante, and Inzolia. He trains the vines primarily in alberello, in some cases growing as bushes and in some training on wires.
Eduardo Torres Acosta produces two single vineyard wines, Pirrera and Quota N, the latter from a Germana vineyard. Pirrera comes from a single contrada located at an elevation of 850 meters. The vineyard's name, Pirrera, references the presence of volcanic stones extracted from a quarry during a lava flow in 1614. Eduardo has acquired this abandoned vineyard and is bringing it back to life. Lighter and fresher than the Versante Nord due to the higher altitude, this is a blend of 90% Nerello Mascalese and 10% local varieties from vines of 50-plus years.
Quota N was first bottled in the 2018 vintage. Eduardo acquired this flat, half-hectare, west-exposed parcel of ungrafted 80-100-year-old, co-planted bush vines.The vineyard is surrounded by stone walls and sits on very rocky, sandy volcanic soils at a high elevation of 1070 meters in the Contrada. The parcel is named Germana for its historical family owner. Still, Eduardo was not allowed to use this or the Nave contrada name because the site is too high to fall within DOC Etna Rosso rules. The local road is called “Strada Quota Nave,” from this phrase, Eduardo pulled the name "Quota N" for the wine.
The production is unavoidably minuscule, smaller even than the parcel size would suggest, due to the naturally low yields of these old-timers and to holes where they have died or stopped producing.
