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5218 Lawton Avenue
Oakland, CA 94114

510-654-9159

Oliver McCrum Wines has been importing small production Italian wine and distributing to fine retail and restaurant establishes throughout California since 1994. Over time, our portfolio of producers has steadily grown to over 45 producers from 15 different regions of Italy. We look for typical Italian wines with clarity and freshness, usually made from indigenous Italian grape varieties using clean, transparent winemaking techniques and no obvious use of oak. 

Rossa Sicily

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"I crossed the Strait of Messina to Sicily, where the best blood oranges in the world grow in the shadow of Mount Etna…" 

- Helena Attlee, ‘The Land Where Lemons Grow’

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About Rossa Sicily:

Rossa Amara

Amara, the feminine form of 'amaro,' is made by a Sicilian orange grower called Edoardo Strano. His farm is on the east coast of Sicily, just south of the city of Catania and Mount Etna, the enormous volcano that dominates this whole corner of the island. The orange grove lies on the slope of Etna where the soil is rich in minerals, at about 300m above sea level and where the temperature can vary by 20 degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit) between day and night. This temperature variation helps to concentrate the flavors in the oranges and turns the peels a bright red. Sicilian blood oranges from the Tarocco varieties are famous throughout Italy for their juice (a glass of Tarocco juice in Sicily in season is a revelation), but Edoardo decided to also use the zest from his oranges as a raw material for an amaro. 

Production of Amara is simple: the oranges are harvested in season, around January, and peeled individually by hand.  (The varieties used are Tarocco Nocellara, Tarocco Gallo, and Tarocco Melis; each one brings something different to the blend.) The peels are then infused in pure grain alcohol; seven batches of peel in fact for each batch of alcohol to concentrate the flavor and color.  The bitter herbs, many of which are also harvested on Etna are infused separately. The infusions are combined, sugar is added, the proof is adjusted with water that springs from Etna, and the amaro is bottled.

As you’d expect, orange zest is the main flavor in Amara, but it is supported by a range of herbal and bitter notes, with a very attractive balance between orange and herbal flavors, and also between sweetness and bitterness. Low in bitterness for an amaro, Amara works very well as a negroni component or as seen in the list here augmenting a classic martini, Diplomat, Paper Plane, and others. Or of course as a digestivo, after dinner.


Edoardo also produces the Liquori dell’Etna, liqueurs made from fruits grown around the south side of the volcano.

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more information:

Visit the Rossa Amara website

Learn about the Liquori dell’Etna