Censo Praruar 2022

Censo Praruar 2022

Il Censo
$30.00

Grape: Catarratto
Vintage: 2022
Type: Orange

This orange wine is 100% catarratto, picked by hand in October 2022 from the family's own vineyards at Palazzo Adriano, high in the hills of western Sicily. Fermentation starts on its own yeasts with the skins and seeds, with no temperature control, and the wine stays on its fine lees until bottling. It is bottled without sterile filtration, with no additions beyond the sulfur that comes from the grapes themselves. The name comes from a local dialect word meaning "turning toward gold."

It pours a deep golden amber, opening with dried apricot, orange peel, and chamomile. On the palate, the medium-bodied frame balances ripe orchard fruit with a firm, tannic grip from the skins. Honey, almond, and a dusty herbal note sit underneath. A bright line of acidity keeps the weight in check. It finishes dry, long, and savory.

Winery

Located in the rugged, high-altitude interior of Sicily near Palazzo Adriano, Il Censo is an organic, low-intervention estate revitalized by Gaetano and Nicoletta Gargano on family farmland that dates back centuries. Situated at roughly 700 meters above sea level on clay-limestone soils, the estate's inland vineyards benefit from intense Mediterranean sunlight counterbalanced by extreme diurnal temperature shifts that lock in fresh natural acidity. Guided by close friend and collaborator Giampiero Bea of Umbria’s iconic Paolo Bea.  The estate is best known for single-varietal expressions of native Sicilian grapes, including Prarar—a structured, amber-hued catarratto macerated on skins for weeks—and Njuro, a savory, mineral-etched red from local perricone. The resulting wines are savory, deeply textural, and distinctly alpine-influenced, offering an earthy, inland counterpoint to Sicily's maritime styles.

Gargano applies an artisanal, non-interventionist approach in the cellar: spontaneous fermentations with native yeasts, long macerations on skins for both reds and whites, no temperature manipulation, and bottling unfined and unfiltered with minimal sulfur additions.