Il Palmento "Pancari": mutamenti territoriali e socioeconomici nel paesaggio agricolo della Valle dell'Acate.

The “Pancari” millstone is one of the largest and best-preserved historic rural buildings for wine production in the Acate valley, a locality in the province of Catania crossed by the Dirillo river. In these places, until the early years of the last century, buildings for wine production constituted the fulcrum of the socioeconomic life of the territory, defining, together with the agricultural activities associated with them, its main landscape characteristics. The state of abandonment in which almost all the valley’s millstones now lie is the main testimony to the radical changes in land use that affected this area at the beginning of the 20th century, when the cultivation of must grapes was progressively replaced by that of table grapes, with the consequent abandonment of rural buildings for wine production. These were either reused for the purposes of the newly settled work activities or rather, in the progression of decades, demolished. The decommissioning of the millstones was followed by further transformations on the surrounding landscape due to the entry into use of more modern systems for growing vines with a greater impact on the land than traditional techniques. In this context, the “Pancari” millstone is distinguished by the specific articulation of the building organism, configured according to a close relationship with the natural slope of the site for the optimal definition of the rooms used for carrying out the work to produce grapes. Despite the persistent abandonment, its state of ruin still allows us to recognise how, in this complex wine production machine, each element of the building assumed specific functions in relation to the entire organism and the surrounding agricultural territory. The path of analysis conducted and the results obtained are presented in order to illustrate the original consistency and the main phases of evolution and transformation that have led the building to its current condition. A preliminary reflection on the possibilities of preserving the “Pancari” millstone is also proposed as an opportunity for the broader protection of the landscape in an area that, although intensely transformed, contains the memory of rural life at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.