Zappa! Magnum

Zappa! is the most expressive entry point to Tanca Nica: 100% Zibibbo (Muscat of Alexandria), skin-contact, dry, from a single plot of hundred-plus-year-old bush vines in Pantelleria. The cuvée is bottled only in 1.5-litre magnums, hand-painted by Nicoletta Pecorelli, in tiny quantity (around 300 magnums). The name and the back-label inscription - "Con una zappa si può immaginare, costruire e prendersi cura di un paesaggio. Questo vino vuole riportare l'attenzione sul lavoro agricolo che c'è dietro ad ogni nostra bottiglia" - frame the wine as a tribute to the hand labour that keeps Pantelleria's alberello pantesco viticulture going (Francesco Ferreri puts it at around 800 hours per hectare per year).

The vines sit in concas, the sunken hollows behind dry-stone muretti that shelter the goblets from the Sirocco and Maestrale. Soils are volcanic - pumice (locally soki soki), lapilli, sandy clay from degraded basalt, red iron-rich sand and black basalt. Roughly twenty days of skin maceration with indigenous yeasts in old chestnut barrels, then élevage in the same vessels stored outdoors so that day-night and seasonal temperature swings drive a slow, savoury-oxidative development. No fining, no filtration, no added sulphur (the house ceiling, when used at all, is 15-20 mg/L total). 13% ABV.

2024 was a brutal drought year on Pantelleria - no rain from January to late September, yields down around 60%, coastal plots unharvested, and several other Tanca Nica labels (Kaffefi, Nivuro Nostrale, Passulata, and the four single-vineyard crus) not bottled at all. Higher-elevation valleys and plots above 250 metres survived best on nighttime humidity. The surviving wines came in with pH near 4 yet retained "beautiful freshness and length," with stress-driven glycerol and a concentrated volcanic mineral imprint.