Azienda Agricola Sciara

Hand planting above the Etna line

Contrada Cielo was planted by hand in 2019 at 1,520 metres; Stef Yim, winemaker at Azienda Agricola Sciara in Randazzo, works from that decision outward. He founded the estate in 2015 after years as a sommelier in fine dining rooms in Los Angeles, carrying the discipline of selection and service into the vineyard and the cellar. The change of station matters here because Sciara asks him to read wine from both sides: as the person who grows and makes it, and as someone trained to understand how a bottle moves at the table. On Etna, Yim farms small, high-altitude parcels rather than a single easy block. The estate works nine vineyard plots on the volcanic slopes around Randazzo, with Nerello Mascalese, Grenache and Carricante among the grapes named for the program. His signature is Contrada Cielo, tied to the hand-planted vineyard at 1,520 metres. The house frames the work through altitude, old vines and volcanic ground, not through volume.

Altitude as the cellar note

Sciara’s method begins before the fruit reaches the cellar. The vineyards sit on Mount Etna’s northern slopes, where volcanic ash, rock and sand change by parcel and by height. Some wines are identified by elevation, including references to 760 metres and 980 metres, a naming choice that keeps the vineyard in the glass before any cellar language takes over. The farming is organic, sustainable and dry-farmed, with a natural production philosophy and minimal intervention in the cellar. That does not make the work loose. It makes the timing stricter. At this scale, picking decisions, fermentations and the handling of skins carry the weight that additions might carry elsewhere. Sciara’s focus covers still red, still white, rosé and skin-contact wines, but the through-line is volcanic fruit held close to its site. Nerello Mascalese gives the Etna register its red frame; Carricante carries the white; Grenache sits here as part of Yim’s willingness to test what these heights can hold.

The vineyard before the tasting room

The place feels more like a working Etna farm than a staged cellar door. Around Randazzo, the slopes open toward old vines, black soils and the presence of the volcano, with the tasting room kept close to the vineyard rather than apart from it. The quiet is useful. It lets the ground do more of the explaining. In the cellar, the small-production scale keeps the work bench-side: fruit from high parcels, wines that follow elevation, and a maker whose earlier service life still informs how each bottle is judged. Sciara is intimate by necessity, shaped by terrain that resists ease. The concrete fact to carry away is Contrada Cielo, the 2019 hand-planted vineyard at 1,520 metres.