Why it matters
The producer
Cantine Settesoli began in 1958 when 68 Menfi growers decided their harvests were worth more pooled than sold separately. Today the cooperative produces 18 million bottles a year and exports to more than 45 countries, numbers that make it one of Sicily's largest wine operations. Scale alone, though, does not explain why the cooperative matters to a buyer.
What sets Settesoli apart is the Mandrarossa label, a premium tier carved from the cooperative's member pool by selecting grapes from fewer than 10% of its growers, those producing the best fruit from Menfi's limestone ridges above the Mediterranean. Mandrarossa launched in 1999 after two decades of internal terroir research, and consultant winemaker Alberto Antonini has shaped its production direction since. The cooperative's accessible Inycon range covers broader styles across white and red; Mandrarossa is where the site-specific work lives.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Menfi sits on the southwestern coast of Sicily, in Agrigento province, where the land climbs above 300 metres before meeting consistent sea breezes off the Mediterranean. The elevation and the wind are not incidental: in this part of Sicily, where summer temperatures push hard, cooler air off the coast extends the ripening window and keeps acidity in the grapes. Limestone dominates the soils of the Mandrarossa vineyards, which gives the wines a firm mineral backbone and limits vine vigour, concentrating flavour in the fruit rather than spreading it across high-yield shoots.
Menfi is also a DOC zone, a legal appellation that covers wines produced from these coastal slopes. The Mandrarossa range works within and beyond Menfi, with one wine, the Sentiero delle Gerle Etna Bianco, sourced from Carricante grown on Etna's volcanic soils on the island's northeast coast, a deliberate territorial reach beyond the cooperative's home ground.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The cooperative farms 35 grape cultivars across its member vineyards, a range that covers both Sicilian natives and international varieties. The Mandrarossa vineyards on Menfi's limestone plateau are managed under strict quality protocols, with organic farming across more than 1,000 hectares reducing chemical inputs and allowing the limestone soils to express themselves more directly in the wine.
In the cellar, Mandrarossa's whites are handled with a cold-soaking technique known as cryomaceration, where the crushed grapes sit at 5 to 8°C for four to six hours before fermentation. This cold contact extracts aromatic compounds from the grape skins without pushing extraction into bitter territory, which is why the Urra di Mare opens with clear citrus and stone-fruit perfume rather than the coarser, more extractive aromas that warmer maceration would produce. Fermentation then runs at 16 to 18°C for 15 to 20 days, cool enough to preserve volatile aromatics, and the wine ages in steel for four months with no oak influence.
Wines to know
The range in view
Mandrarossa divides broadly into two groups: the Mediterranean whites grown at Menfi, and a territorial outlier from Etna.
Urra di Mare is 100% Sauvignon Blanc from Menfi's limestone slopes. Cryomaceration, cool fermentation in steel, and four months of ageing produce a wine that is straw-yellow with golden reflections and opens with citrus peel, peach, apricot, mint, and basil. The aromatics are bright and herbal, the texture clean and direct, with no oak softening and no residual sweetness. It is one of the more unusual Sauvignon Blancs in Italian wine: Mediterranean sun on limestone, cold-handling in the cellar, and a result that sits closer to a Marlborough or Loire model than to the broader whites of southern Italy.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Mandrarossa Urra di Mare Sauvignon Blanc is the first bottle. It is 100% Sauvignon Blanc grown on Menfi's limestone above the Mediterranean, cold-soaked for aromatic extraction, fermented cool in steel, and aged without oak for four months. In the glass it is straw-yellow and clear, with citrus, ripe peach, apricot, mint, and basil rising immediately from the wine. The palate is light and sharp, with a clean acid line and a finish that is herbal and dry. Sauvignon Blanc does not have a strong tradition in Sicily, and it shows exactly what Menfi's elevation, sea breezes, and limestone can do when the cellar keeps its hands off the wine.