Luna Gaia

Salemi, Trapani, Sicilia

We discovered this beautiful project hiding out in the traditional heartland of Marsala production (in Western Sicily’s Trapani province), a large group of biodynamic wine farmers that have joined forces as BioGaia and brought their grapes together to produce Luna Gaia as a collective. They’ve teamed up with the wonderful Cantina Orsogna, the largest Demeter-certified biodynamic wine producer in all of Italy (hailing from Abruzzo—you may be familiar with their lovely Lunaria wines) to fashion wines of surprising depth and pleasure with the scale and distribution that allows these wonderful drops to slide into market at such loving price points.

The wines are all farmed beautifully, fermented with indigenous yeast, and bottled with a small addition of S02 and nothing more. The quality and clarity of expression came as a total surprise, surpassing expectations. I’m so excited to bring these to Alberta!

A note on the colourful labels: Sicily is an island of stories and traditions that are orally transmitted by traditional puppeteer families called the Pupari. They’ve passed on the art of puppet theater for centuries in what are called Opera dei Pupi, the most famous production being The Carolingian Cycle, which tells the story of the epic battle between Orlando and Rinaldo, knights in the service of the court of Charlemagne, both in love with the beautiful Angelica. Pairing their indigenous Sicilian varieties with the plot points of the Island’s most loved play alongside traditional colors and motifs just felt like the most apt visual representation of these supremely classical and democratic offerings of beautifully grown fruit rendered in a minimal-intervention, true-to-history cut.