WINE NEWS /
Planeta Celebrates Its Tenth Birthday!
All across Italy today people toasted the
tenth birthday of Planeta, the estate that brought new life to the
wine of Sicily. The winery is holding a banquet that will feature
the very first wine they produced, a 1995 Chardonnay. They also extended
the celebration throughout mainland Italy by sending bottles of their
widely respected wine to all classes of oenophiles for uncorking
on this special day.
It was near Lake Arancio in the Sicilian countryside, where the
island’s oldest vines are found, that Francesca, Alessio, and
Santi Planeta first established themselves ten years ago. They have
since added land in Menfi, where they grow Merlot, Syrah, and Cabernet
Sauvignon, and further south in Ragusa, where they produce Cerasuolo,
their first DOC wine. Their most recent expansion was in Noto, known
for its impressive Baroque architecture and Contrada Buonivini wines.
The estate’s expansion is also apparent when you see figures:
this year’s vintage is expected to produce 20% more bottles
than last year’s, and the winery’s income increased 28%
from 2002 to 2003, and with this year’s projected 20% increase
in the number of bottlings, their income should shoot up by another
25%. The young estate has also made quite an impression on the international
scene, as their wines are now present in 41 foreign markets, making
up 45% of their total sales.
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