Organic Food Guide

A t the edge of Siġġiewi, up on Malta's higher ground at around 235 metres above sea level, sits the hillside world of Mark Cassar, the driving force behind MARCASAR Vineyards, a project that feels less like a conventional winery and more like a living experiment in how far you can let nature take the lead. The vineyards are planted in one of Malta's most exposed and expressive landscapes, with limestone and clay soils divided across different grape parcel, Chardonnay on clay, Merlot and Petit Verdot on limestone. The site is terraced, open to the prevailing north-northeast winds, and only a couple of kilometres from the Mediterranean Sea. Nothing here feels controlled in the industrial sense; instead, everything feels negotiated with the land. The farming philosophy is fully organic, vegan, and chemical-free. No pesticides, no herbicides, no systemic treatments. Rainwater is collected and reused, and the vineyard operates more like an ecosystem than a farm; wild herbs, insects, bees, reptiles, and all kinds of "uninvited" life are simply part of the system. Mark's personal story runs through all of this. Growing up in Floriana, he remembers early encounters with wine as something almost mythical, fetching it as a child from a local place called Greenshatter and being struck by how good it felt and tasted. Later came a formative scholarship in France at 16, studying cuisine at a time when French kitchens were deeply rooted in local sourcing and seasonal cooking. It was a world where chefs and farmers were tightly connected, and wine was just as much a part of the working environment as food. Long shifts in kitchens, shared bottles after service, and a close relationship with terroir all shaped his understanding of taste, craft, and place. A major turning point came years later when he discovered he had a sensitivity, effectively an allergy, to sulfites (SO₂), commonly used in winemaking. That pushed him to rethink everything. Finding no suitable wines made without chemicals or additives, he began making his own in Malta, starting in 2002 with small-scale, garage-style production. By 2015, the project had evolved into a full winery using traditional Georgian qvevri clay vessels buried underground in a marani. From that point, the process became radically minimal: whole grapes fermented with skins and seeds, no stainless steel, no filtration, no heavy intervention; just time, clay, and natural fermentation. One of the ideas that runs through Mark's philosophy is the connection between what we eat and how we feel internally, particularly through the gut. He describes the gut as a central part of how the body processes not just food, but overall wellbeing. It's where nutrients are absorbed, but also where a large part of the body's microbiome lives, the ecosystem of bacteria that influences digestion, immunity, and even aspects of mood and energy regulation through what's often called the gut– brain axis. In that sense, his approach to wine is about trying to keep the process as close as possible to its natural state, avoiding chemicals or additives that might disrupt that biological balance. The idea is that if the grapes are grown in a living soil, fermented naturally, and not heavily altered in the cellar, the result is something that interacts more gently with the body. It's less about wine as a "health product" and more about reducing interference in a system he sees as already interconnected. Even the cellar reflects that thinking. Wines are fermented slowly in qvevri, buried in the ground, with minimal disturbance. Sediment is expected, not removed. Bottling is done carefully but without aggressive stabilisation, preserving as much of the natural expression as possible. What makes Mark particularly memorable, beyond the technical side, is his way of speaking about it all. He's genuinely funny and easygoing, moving between detailed explanations of soil, fermentation, and microbiology, and broader reflections on how food and drink relate to human wellbeing. He has a way of making quite complex ideas feel conversational rather than academic. He's also very open about the realities: this kind of winemaking is not the easiest path financially. It's unpredictable, labour-intensive, and far from the most commercially efficient model. But for him, that trade-off is part of staying aligned with the land and the process. In the end, the vineyard feels like an extension of his thinking, grounded in place, shaped by experimentation, and driven by the idea that wine is most interesting when it stays as close as possible to something alive. 25

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