Officina del Vento (Stagnone, Sicily)
Written By Lyle Railsback July, 2026
Salt flats surrounding the old Grillo vines of Officina del Vento in Northwest Sicily.
When it comes to Italian wine credentials, no achievement is rarer than the Master of Wine title — a distinction so demanding that, for decades, no Italian held it at all. Then, within the span of three years, three did: Gabriele Gorelli in 2021, Andrea Lonardi in 2023, and Pietro Russo in 2024. Rarer still, the three are old friends who studied for the exam side by side. We are proud to introduce their joint project, Officina del Vento, to the US for the very first time.
The three met at an MW orientation in northern Italy and hit it off immediately, gathering for study sessions that stretched across years and, for Russo, at least one failed attempt in London along the way. His two friends talked him out of quitting. Their project has since drawn its own attention: Wine Spectator's Robert Camuto profiled the trio in December 2025, calling their story one of the most inspiring he'd come across in Italian wine, and Falstaff's Italian critic went further still, dubbing the wine the "Roulot of Sicily."
Much of that studying took place near Russo's home outside Marsala, on Sicily's western tip, where the Stagnone Nature Reserve forms a wide, shallow lagoon toward the Egadi Islands. It's a working landscape as much as a scenic one — wooden piers, small fishing boats, and centuries-old salt windmills sit alongside vineyards of old massale-selection Grillo — not clonal material, but plants propagated the traditional way, from cuttings of the vineyard's own old vines — a grape historically destined for fortified Marsala rather than dry table wine.
The project itself began almost by accident. In 2022, Russo came across a half-acre seafront parcel for sale, planted decades earlier with loose-bunched, low-yielding Grillo, and sent a photo to Gorelli and Lonardi with no pitch attached. The answer came back immediately: buy it. They added a couple of rented parcels nearby, bringing their holdings to roughly two and a half acres, farmed without irrigation thanks to underground springs that feed the coast even through Sicily's driest summers.
Their first harvest, in 2023, produced a small run of dry white Grillo, picked two weeks before other growers in the area — and released the following spring under the name Officina del Vento: workshop of the wind. The result sits somewhere between a saline Chablis and a wind-battered Assyrtiko, with the citrus zest and bitter-almond finish that mark the best old-vine Grillo of the coast.
The three founders have also turned their attention to the land itself. Alongside four other local producers, they founded an association called Salt West, built around a shared commitment to sustainably farmed, low-yield Grillo aged at least a year before release — along with local causes like beach cleanups and pier repair in the reserve.
We are honored to represent Officina del Vento exclusively in the US, beginning with this 2024 vintage. Production remains minuscule — with just 28 cases of their first two vintages arriving in New York this August.
AVAILABLE WINES
Officina del Vento 2023 Sicilia Grillo (PDF TECH SHEET)
Officina del Vento 2024 Sicilia Grillo (PDF TECH SHEET)