Casa Grazia

Fruit held to lake and sea

The decision begins in the vineyard, before the fruit reaches the cellar: Tonino Guzzo, winemaker at Casa Grazia in Gela, works with estate grapes grown beside Lake Biviere. His station is not separable from that shore. The vines stand within the Biviere di Gela Natural Reserve, on sandy and calcareous soils, with dunes, wind, olive groves, orchards and a coastal salt lake setting the conditions before any cellar choice can correct them. Casa Grazia has held its modern identity since 1998, and bottled its first wines in 2005, when the estate moved from grape growing into its own artisanal production. Guzzo’s role sits inside that passage from cultivation to bottle. The house does not state an apprenticeship line for him, so the clearer lineage here is practical: fruit grown on the estate, handled under an organic philosophy, and returned to the glass with the sapid edge the lake and sea give it. The discipline is repetition by season, not biography. At Casa Grazia, the winemaker’s authority comes from holding that sequence together, grape to glass, without losing the place that made the fruit.

Twenty-seven hectares on sandy calcareous ground

The program rests on about 27 hectares of vineyards and an annual production of roughly 90,000 bottles. Casa Grazia grows Frappato, Nero d’Avola, Grillo, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Moscato, with Cerasuolo di Vittoria DOCG anchoring the local register. The cellar works across still red, still white, sparkling and dessert wines, but the common thread is the Biviere salinity, carried by wind over the vines and read in the wines as a sapid, mineral note. Manual harvest is part of the estate method, and organic practice shapes the work in the rows; biodynamic methods were upgraded in 2019 to strengthen that viticulture. Frappato DOC is aged in stainless steel here, a choice that keeps the grape’s freshness and aromatic line close to the surface. Elsewhere the house adjusts fermentation and aging to the variety, rather than forcing one cellar gesture across the portfolio. The named bottles give the range: Victorya 1607, Laetitya, Gradiva, Emiryam, Vi Veri, Zahara, Adorè and Euphorya.

The cellar beside the reserve

The cellar is housed in a late-1800s rural building, renovated for visits, tastings and estate work. It keeps the scale of a country property rather than a polished showpiece. The tasting room looks outward to Lake Biviere, to dunes and planted rows, and the room stays quiet enough for the place to do some of the explaining. This is not scenery added after the wine; it is the condition the wines return to when opened. A vineyard walk here makes the production logic visible, from sandy-calcareous soil to the saltwater lake, from the wind to the glass. Inside, the cellar tour and guided tasting keep the same order: land first, then method, then bottle. Guzzo’s bench features the craft and the next glass, Zahara Riserva Grillo 2023.