Marco De Bartoli

Marco De Bartoli (1945-2011) was a professional race car driver for about ten years before he became a winemaker, which tells you something about his tolerance for conventional wisdom. He inherited the family baglio in Contrada Samperi, on the outskirts of Marsala, through his mother. In 1978 he began laying down what would become Vecchio Samperi; the first bottle was commercially released in 1980. The ambition was to make what Marsala had been before the British arrived in 1773 and started fortifying everything in sight.

The wine was Vecchio Samperi. 100% Grillo, unfortified, aged in a perpetuum - a solera of casks stretching back decades. It reaches 17-18% alcohol naturally, through slow oxidation and the concentration of multiple vintages in the same barrel. It was also, legally, a problem. Italian authorities shut the winery down between 1995 and 2000, arguing that an unfortified wine aged this long could not be sold as wine. Marco's response was to keep making Vecchio Samperi and, in parallel, make legal Marsala DOC from 1984 onward - just to demonstrate that the appellation could produce serious wine if anyone cared to try. Between the two, he dragged Marsala back toward credibility.

After Marco died in 2011, his three children took over. Renato (the eldest, family enologist; left in 2016 to consult elsewhere, returned full-time in 2021) leads the cellar at Samperi and the classical-method Terzavia. Sebio (Sebastiano) ran Pantelleria and the Bukkuram, integrating art and sculpture into the estate, until his death in June 2025 at the age of forty-seven. Gipi (Giuseppina) handles administration, hospitality, and communications. Holdings are still small but larger than the original Samperi nucleus - roughly twelve hectares of Grillo on limestone-and-tufa at Samperi, close to five hectares of Zibibbo on volcanic soil at Pantelleria (Bukkuram, added 1984) plus the smaller Cufurà parcel, a small organically-farmed Catarratto plot in the Marsala hinterland, and a small Etna project (DBE) in Contrada Rampante, first harvest 2021. Certified organic. Native yeasts since the 2006 Integer.

The wines worth knowing:

• Vecchio Samperi - the manifesto. Unfortified solera-aged Grillo. The standard release averages around fifteen years of perpetuum aging; the Ventennale is the twenty-year, and anniversary bottlings (Trentennale, Quarantennale) stretch to thirty or forty. It cannot legally be called Marsala, which is exactly the point.
• Marsala Superiore / Vergine / Riserva - proper fortified Marsala (including Vigna La Miccia and occasional rarities like the Marsala Superiore Oro Riserva 1988), made with the same rigour, aged in the same cellars.
• Bukkuram Sole d'Agosto - Passito di Pantelleria from sun-dried Zibibbo. Among the benchmarks of the style.
• Grappoli del Grillo - dry still Grillo. The less philosophical line, though "less philosophical" is relative.
• Integer - the skin-contact, native-yeast line, made in both Grillo and Zibibbo versions. The natural-wine bottling, first made in 2006.
• Terzavia - classical-method sparkling.
• Rosso di Marco - Pignatello (Perricone), with a race-car silhouette on the label that is not subtle.

Vecchio Samperi is why Marco De Bartoli matters. It is the closest thing still being made to pre-fortification Sicilian stravecchio - a wine as it might have tasted in 1750, before the British invented an industry around it. Which is another way of saying: you are not drinking a wine here. You are drinking an argument.