Casa Grande

Casa Grande sits in Contrada Santa Margherita, the most recently planted of Arianna Occhipinti's nine contrade, in the hills above Chiaramonte Gulfi, the town Sicilians call the balcony of Sicily. From the terrace the view runs over olive groves and almond orchards down toward the Iblean coast. Ragusa, Modica and Noto, the baroque heart of southeastern Sicily, are all a short drive, and the beaches at Marina di Ragusa are about forty kilometres away, an easy day out when the sea pulls harder than the vines.

Arianna Occhipinti started her label in 2004 with one hectare of abandoned vines in Fossa di Lupo, after a university course in viticulture that taught chemistry over instinct. She ignored the chemistry. Two decades later her estate spans nine contrade in the Cerasuolo di Vittoria DOCG, and in July 2025 she extended the same thinking into hospitality with Chaza, a two-house project designed by studioGUM. Casa Grande is the larger and more contemporary of the pair, built for groups who want shared meals and quiet mornings on the same terrace. Local craftsmen built it from white Iblean stone, ceramic and iron, the materials that run through the whole estate, but the result reads modern rather than rustic. The panoramic terrace is the organising idea, framing an uninterrupted view over the Santa Margherita countryside, with the pool sitting just below it and the garden opening directly onto the vineyard.