Marco de Bartoli is a Sicilian Vintner and pioneer in the promotion of Marsala wines and native Sicilian grape varietals. A passionate, tenacious and firm man who advocated a return to the origins.
The Marco de Bartoli winery is located 12km from the town of Marsala, in the Western part of Sicily. The winery was set up in the 1980s and can be found inside an old Sicilian baglio that Marco inherited from his grandmother. Baglio is a term that designates a historical feudal hamlet around which a small community of workers and land owners lived.
At this time, Marsala wine was facing big decline. Heedless of this economic feedback, Marco believed it a moral duty to uphold the traditional values of his land and set about creating a high quality Marsala wine that would help rediscover the real value of local wine tradition. Thus the first Vecchio Samperi wine was born. Vecchio Samperi received big acclaim from the critics: it was unique as its tenacious producer.
Marco's wines have since multiplied beyond Vecchio Samperi, and he now produces: Marsala Superiore Twenty years, Josephine Doré, an easier to drink Inzolia, (the younger part of Vecchio Samperi that is, obviously, aged with the Soleras method), Josephine Rouge (sweet red from Pignatello grapes) and Moscato Passito of Pantelleria.
Today the winery is still family-owned. Marco’s children proudly keep their father’s beliefs alive, also promoting organic viticulture and natural vinification.
