My name is Marilena Barbera and I am a winemaker independent. I live and make wine in Menfi, Sicily, with the grapes grown, selected and collected in our Tenuta Belicello.
Making wine for me is a lifestyle choice.
I returned to Sicily after years spent somewhere else that didn't belong to me. Here I found the vineyard and my father's dream: I took this dream and discovered that it was mine too .
I live in Memphis, where I feel the energy of this beautiful and difficult land. I try to understand its essence, interpreting it through the fruits that it gives us every day; I am its witness and guardian, preserving its integrity, absorbing its strength and richness, trying to transfer its soul to the wine, without tricks .
I produce my wines practicing organic farming and natural winemaking , with the utmost respect for the Menfi terroir . In the vineyard I do not use herbicides, chemical fertilizers or systemic products, committing myself to safeguarding the land that nourishes us and protecting the rich biodiversity of the natural environment in which I live and work. In the cellar I have chosen to work only with spontaneous fermentations and with simple and non-invasive oenological practices , limiting to a minimum or completely excluding the use of additives that could alter the personality and expressiveness of the wines and their bond with the land that generates them.
I love this job and the wonderful terroir where my wines are born : the very blue sea, looking towards the south, low cliffs and reed thickets, and golden sand dunes covered with wild lilies; the blinding sun, the salty breeze (now an African wind, now a gentle west wind, now a cool north wind...); the river, which flows slowly in large spirals, vineyards as far as the eye can see, centenary olive trees and artichoke fields.
And, above all, the vestiges of ancient civilizations, which the Sicans and Elymians and Phoenicians and Greeks have entrusted to the hands of those who cultivate the pride of witnessing it.
This is Memphis: air and light, sea and wind, and millenary knowledge. And this is in my wines.
Marilena
