Cédric Perraud

Cédric Perraud
Randazzo, Sicily (Etna), Italy

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Cédric’s winery is based on the north-west of Mount Etna, close to the village of Randazzo, where he lives in a tiny stone house in the middle of one of his vineyards and shares a cellar with a fellow winemaker.

Cédric was born in Clisson, a french town southeast of Nantes, where his grandfather worked as a small wine producer. After training in agriculture, he travelled throughout France and Italy discovering different vineyards and wine regions that could offer him an outdoor lifestyle and give him the chance to work with the land.

Captivated by Mount Etna and the idea of growing vines on an active volcano, Cédric chose the east coast of Sicily as his home. The soils here are incredibly fertile, rich with minerals from ancient and ongoing eruptions, and the lower slopes flourish with orchards and vineyards.

The winery came to life in 2017, after Cédric had learned to work with this particular land alongside fellow winemakers in the area. Working and exchanging knowledge with other winemakers is an important feature of his approach; tasting each other's wines and swapping stories and experiences. In total he works with 1,5 hectares of vines at a 600–850m altitude, paying precise attention to the differences between each parcel, and farming with a high awareness and understanding of the soil. 4 of these plots are in Randazzo (north-west of Etna) and 2 are in Milo (east of Etna), the latter being where his white grapes are grown. All of his vineyards are mixed plantings, meaning that for his single-varietal wines the grapes are selected from different plots.

From the first vintage in 2019, the cantina operates on a small scale, currently producing around 4000 bottles a year. While his approach is very low intervention, Cédric finds that Etna is not the right region to work completely without sulphites and adds a minimal amount at bottling.

Cédric takes the unique terroir and tradition of winemaking that Etna has to offer and seeks to balance it with his own personal approach, aiming to “show the terroir but keep freshness”. We’re delighted to be working with Cédric’s wines!