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Sébastien POLY

DOMAINE STILICCIONU

Ajaccio Organic (AB, Agriculture biologique) and Protected Designation of Origin (AOP, Appellation d'Origine Protégée) wines

Visits : All year round by appointment.

Regions : Sartinesi Valincu Taravu

Categories : Wine

Agricultural sectors : Corsican wines

It’s perhaps not one of Corsica’s most celebrated vineyards, but the high quality of Stiliccionu estate's wines gets a standing ovation from insiders, wine merchants and great chefs and they snap up the small quantities of Sébastien Poly-Casabianca's production.

Meeting with a demanding winemaker who develops his wines with equal amounts of finesse and discretion. Sébastien Poly-Casabianca did not inherit a large wine estate with a well-established reputation. "My grandfather was a works manager and had planted the 2-3 hectares of vines that I inherited to make his own wine and sell it to a few regular customers in the region". After training in Cahors, Sébastien took up the challenge of turning the Stiliccionu estate into a benchmark of island viticulture in 2006. "I knew from the start what kind of wines I wanted to make by taking into account the terroir that had been my inheritance and what nature could give me". Here, no clean, straight rows of vines but wild flowers and weeds in the middle of the vines. "To be honest, at the start it was the lack of manpower that prevented me from doing the weeding but, over the years, I have come to realise that, by just leaving nature be, a whole ecosystem had become set up that was not in competition with my vineyard.

Quite the contrary, this plant cover protects it from frost in winter and heat in summer”. Based on this observation, the young winemaker is now developing his method even more: "I am gradually expanding the estate by creating small plots, some of which are for agroforestry. I am also part of a research program where I am working with scientists to study my crops more precisely, using the sensitive crystallisation technique in particular. In this way, I can develop unique cuvées from carefully selected vines."