The genesis

During the Second World War, frightened by the bombings and raids of the English, Canadian and American forces, my grandfather Sebastiano hid in a monastery in Milo. The combination of fear and precariousness made him more sensitive, binding him deeply to this land which finds its fertile strength in volcanic precariousness. A few years after the end of the war he bought a vineyard and a house, made wine and held parties to which the entire citizenry was invited. 

I spent many summers in Milo's house between childhood and adolescence, he taught me the pleasure of reading. I was always fascinated by the scents and the clouds, by the walks with my brother in the woods looking for toads. Then as adolescence and sociability progressed, the house became the scene of crazy parties, the forest of motorbike rides.

In the nineties the vineyard was replaced with a cherry and plum plantation. The Sicilian wine boom erupted ten years later thanks to new techniques imported from France, but we had already lost the wine quotas and objectively the vineyards are ugly to look at. At the end of the 20th century we rented the manor house to make it a restaurant, named after the wonderful view of the Belvedere of Etna. After only two years the 2001 earthquake made the structure unusable, definitively closing the restaurant and condemning the house to abandonment.

In the meantime, the fruit trade has become fruitless, between the supermarket mafia which has cartelized fruit prices at the market and the country's suicidal economic choices.

The abandonment of the property stretched on for eleven years, until a man was hanged by his brothers from a beautiful chestnut tree. Three criminals who entered the woods to steal chestnuts. The Carabinieri urged me to fence the property, which allowed me to override my brother's veto who saw abandonment as the only profitable use of the countryside.

The restoration lasted three years and cost a fortune; the long abandonment and countless raids had seriously compromised the house. 

Experiencing this space again was an epiphany. I have met incredible and inspiring neighbors, I have learned the agricultural rhythms of the seasons, the culture of honey, the poetry of sheep farming and I am developing a deep connection with the volcano. During the first autumn the clouds whispered to me to build a guitar, so I did. I've never had one at home and a world to explore was revealed to me, made up of sounds, new emotions, scents and essences. 

Sebastiano Pavia