Filippo Rizzo had a restaurant in Belgium in the 1990s. He and his wife Nancy were early advocates for natural wines, and in that very small circle of professionals - even smaller outside of Paris - the couple bought wine from a broker named Frank Cornelissen. A few years after Frank moved to Etna to start making his iconic wines, Filippo and Nancy decided to return to Filippo's family farm of 11 hectares in central Sicily just outside the village of San Cono. He worked with Frank for several vintages to learn the ins and outs of natural winemaking before starting his own winery, Lamoresca.

Lamoresca is in the middle of nowhere. There are no other vineyards for 50 kilometers in any direction, but it's prototypical Sicilian country, perfect for olives and vines. The farm is high enough in elevation (about 450 meters) to lift the vineyard out of the worst of the heat, with sandstone and iron rich clay soils that give the grapes a signature note of minerality. Filippo works entirely by hand with Nero d'Avola and Frappato, the signature red grapes for most of Sicily, but where so many Sicilian wines are heavy, sappy, filled with alcohol and empty of acidity, Lamoresca wines are complex, balanced, and elegantly aromatic. Even when they have the stuffing you expect from Sicily, they still speak in measured tones.