Wine and Its Legality-A Survey to Know the Consumer Opinions on the Activities of Sicilian Wine Companies Operating on Lands Confiscated from the Mafia

Abstract

The current guidelines of the European Union Common Agricultural Policy face the agricultural sector in the position of the backbone for the economic development of rural areas and regions with difficult economic differentiation. The EU Common Agricultural Policy defines agriculture as “multifunctional” and among the different roles and functions expected, there is also the “social function”, defined as the ability that the farm has to generate services with respect to a population with risk of social exclusion. This paper investigated all the agricultural initiatives with social impacts that were carried in the lands confiscated from the organized crime (called mafia), mainly in the South of Italy and especially in Sicily. Through an Italian law, these lands could be used with social purposes by a particular kind of associations which might exercise an agricultural activity with the aim to produce food products, sell them in the market and offer employment opportunities in the agricultural sector. In particular, in Sicily, the activity of the “Social Cooperative Placido Rizzotto-Libera Terra” and its winery “Cantina Centopassi” which received honors and awards for its production of wine obtained from the earliest harvests and for its social work in that territory were well known. This work, which was part of a much broader study on “wine and legality”, aimed to know the opinion of Sicilian wine consumers and their knowledge about this topic with particular reference to the Cantina Centopassi.