Frank Cornelissen
Appellations
History
Frank Cornelissen is a Belgian-born winemaker who, after years importing fine wine and travelling through Georgia, Spain and Portugal in search of wine's origins, settled on the northern slopes of Mount Etna and made his first vintage in 2001 — well before Etna's modern fame. He was drawn by the extraordinary diversity of the volcano's soils and by Etna's signature red grape, Nerello Mascalese, believing the pairing could yield reds of great complexity and site expression.
He became one of the most influential figures of the natural-wine movement and of Etna's revival, farming without synthetic chemicals and vinifying with minimal intervention — spontaneous fermentations, little or no added sulfur, and ageing that has famously included buried epoxy-lined amphorae as well as more conventional vessels. His single-contrada bottlings helped establish Etna's north valley (Barbabecchi, Feudo di Mezzo, Chiusa Spagnola and others) as reference crus, and his approach has been widely imitated across the mountain.
The estate's wines are organised as a hierarchy: the varietal, easy-drinking MunJebel and the pink Susucaru at the base, the single-contrada MunJebel crus above them, and at the summit the Magma — a Grand Vin from very old Nerello Mascalese vines in contrada Barbabecchi. Many bottlings are released as Terre Siciliane IGT rather than Etna DOC, a deliberate choice that gives Cornelissen freedom over blending and site designation.