The Calabretta family has been growing grapes on the north slope of Mount Etna since around 1900, when great-grandfather Gaetano started his first vineyards. For most of that history the family sold its wine in barrel directly to restaurants and private customers, some of whom traveled long distances to collect it; it was only in 1997 that third- and fourth-generation father and son Massimo and Massimiliano decided to bottle under their own label to preserve the family's traditions. 

Massimiliano farms 13 hectares of volcanic soils organically, with most vines 70 to 80 years old and many growing on their original ungrafted rootstock, at elevations where phylloxera cannot survive. 

Fermentations are carried out exclusively with wild yeasts, and the wines age in large neutral Slavonian oak botti with the same patient, unhurried approach he once described as making wine "like Bartolo Mascarello." 

The Cala Cala is his multi-vintage house red: "cala cala" means "gulp, gulp" in Sicilian dialect, and Massimiliano blends reserve wines across years to create something with depth and age that stays practical enough to actually drink.