Halarà (Χαλάρα) is Greek for "take it easy."

Stefano Amerighi
Francesco de Franco ('A Vita)
Nino Barraco (Barraco)
Corrado Dottori (La Distesa)
Giovanni Scarfone (Bonavita)
Francesco Ferreri (Tanca Nica)

Six close friends, a who's who in the Italian natural (but territory-driven and clean) wine world.  Their families have been vacationing together for years. Then they had the opportunity to buy a vineyard together, one that was going to be ripped out, the planting rights of which would probably have been sold to someone for a new vineyard in northern Italy.  So they saved this vineyard, in Contrada Abbadessa in Marsala, which is planted ad alberello to roughly 80% Parpato and 20% Catarratto, 40-year-old vines. Parpato, also called Quattro Rappe, is one of those forgotten grapes...it was thought to be a local biotype of Grenache but it seems now is more similar to Carignan.  Anyway, it's adapted to this territory over the centuries and behaves like itself.

The project is about this vineyard, a celebration of Mediterranean-ness.  Marsala is essentially the dead-center point of the Mediterranean.  Halarà is also about a spirit of collaboration between six winemakers with their own estates to run, spread between Sicily, Pantelleria, Calabria, Tuscany, and Le Marche. 

Though the vineyard is in Marsala (the place), they are not making Marsala (the wine).  For now, three wines...a rosato, a rosso, and, eventually-con calma-halarà, a bianco.  Fresh, energetic, and belying the hot, arid climate of Western Sicily.

2019 was their first vintage. 

"What is the Mediterranean? A thousand things together.  Not a landscape, but innumerable landscapes. Not a sea, but a succession of seas. Not a civilization, but a series of cilivizations stacked upon one another." -Fernand Braudel