Under a wicked August sun, Ignazio pilots his big BMW through a snarl of cars and motor scooters in downtown Palermo, one hand on the wheel and the other wrapped congenially around the passenger seat. As driving challenges go, Palermo may be second only to Naples in sheer chaos. But to Ignazio the near misses and tight squeezes of the ancient palm-lined streets are mere breaks in the conversation. When you’re a Sicilian’s guest you don’t want for anything, least of all attention. Why would a little thing like life-threatening traffic keep him from looking us in the eyes when he speaks to us?
You sometimes see this kind of automotive artistry in New York cabbies, but they don’t have Ignazio’s flair: Puffing on a conical-shaped toscano cigar, his wild halo of silver curls flapping in the breeze, he has gotten onto the subject of Sicilian ice cream, for which his hands must occasionally abandon the wheel to make his point properly. We are on our way to Mondello, a relatively affluent suburb north of Palermo, to a bar he says has the best gelato in Italy.
“Sicilians are the only Italians with a real dessert culture,” he explains, shouting over the nasal whine of the weaving motorini (scooters). “The Arabs introduced sherbet here, which they learned from the Chinese, and that gave way to gelato.” Ignazio punctuates many of his pronouncements with “Mi segui?” (You follow me?) and a gentle jab to the ribs with his elbow. He points out a few buildings done in the Moorish style, their domed roofs giving the steaming streets the look of a North African casbah. “Most of the desserts we have are from the Arab culture, which is a big part of Sicilian culture.”
For most Italians, and especially food and wine people, this kind of conversation is fairly standard fare. You hear a lot about how Italians are enraptured by food, in love with food, etc. But in general their approach to food (and wine) is surprisingly light on poetic flourishes. It’s more scientific, historical, almost religious in its devotion to the “right” and “wrong” way to do things. Maybe it’s the heavy Catholic influence in Italy, or just the weight of history, but Italians temper their passion for eating and drinking with an almost grave seriousness about it. If you settle for something that isn’t giusto (just, correct) you are failing yourself and, to a degree, lowering your standing among your friends. Any Italian worth his salt has strong opinions on where to find the proper versions of whatever food he’s looking for, even if it means traveling well out of his way to get some.
This is not to say there isn’t a fast-food culture in Italy—it’s growing all the time. But the percentage of people who think very carefully about everything they eat seems much higher in Italy than in America. So it is with Ignazio: There’s properly made gelato—one with the appropriate cremosità (creaminess) and “recognizability of flavor”—and then there’s the rest, which are to be avoided. “An industrial gelato is pumped full of air,” he says with a wince. “A gelato artigianale is more concentrated, with natural flavor. It should taste like what it says it is.”
Sicilian gelato is nevertheless somewhat leaner, he explains, than gelati from other parts of Italy, because it is either milk- or water-based, as opposed to cream-based. Milk is used for flavors such as almond or pistachio, while water is often preferred for fruit flavors including cocomero (watermelon), mandarino (tangerine), and fichi d’india (prickly pear). Then there’s the granita, a simpler, soupier combination of churned ice, sugar, and either juice or some other natural flavoring (lemon and coffee are the two most popular).
Ignazio tucks the BMW into a highly illegal-looking parking spot and we’re off to the practical part of the lesson: the ritual. As with “taking a coffee,” the gelato break in Sicily is built into the day’s schedule, like picking up the dry cleaning or dropping the kids off at school. On our arrival at his bar of choice, a bustling little place called Al Chiosco, he takes the liberty of ordering for us: a coffee granita, an almond gelato, and a gelato di fichi d’india, along with three brioches. The counter man passes Ignazio the brioches, which he gently tears open, then plops in the scoops of granita and gelato. “This is the classic palermitano way,” he says. “We do this for breakfast: You have a nice coffee granita in a brioche or maybe just some whipped cream inside. Then a gelato or a lemon granita in the afternoon.” Either way, the brioche is a critical component.
The actual eating of these creations takes on a strangely serious tone as Ignazio (who takes the granita) awaits our reaction on the gelati. Standing outside the shop in the balmy Piazza Mondello, we find ourselves nodding thoughtfully, as if we were tasting an aged Barolo, and using wine-like descriptors: concentrated, balanced, and so on. It seems a little crazy to be thinking so critically about ice cream. Or is it?
“Even in Sicily you can’t always find a proper gelato,” Ignazio says, touching on the evils of artificial flavorings and reiterating his disdain for airy, “industrial” products. “But the tradition was born here. You don’t find this taste anywhere else. Mi segui?”
The best Sicilian gelati are those made from flavors indigenous to the island, which is as diverse geographically as it is culturally. Lemons, citrons, tangerines, oranges, almonds, pistachios—these are all huge crops in Sicily, as are less gelato-ready foods such as wheat, fava beans, artichokes, capers, olives, and, of course, wine and table grapes (most of the latter become raisins). Much of the island lies at a latitude more southerly than Tunisia’s, and it is the hottest, dryest region of Italy. And yet in its northern and eastern reaches, it is an extension of the Apennine mountain chain, with peaks that remain covered in snow for much of the winter. It isn’t so much an island as a micro-continent, and it is bursting with produce all year round: a rainbow of citrus fruits in the winter; artichokes and young wheat in the spring; almonds and pistachios in August; grapes and olives in the fall.
Since the days of the Greeks, Sicily has been Italy’s granary, and its reputation as an agricultural mass producer has carried over into wine. The island’s most famous wine, Marsala, came into being mainly because the English merchant credited with creating it, John Woodhouse, needed to find a replacement for French claret during the eighteenth-century War of the Spanish Succession, which pitted Britain against France (this was when the market for Sherries, Madeiras, and Ports first developed as well).
Although Marsala became known not just as “filler” but as a world-class wine in its own right, Sicily has for centuries focused on the production of wine in bulk. The island is Italy’s largest region and has traditionally been Italy’s most productive, although lately both the Veneto and Puglia have surpassed it. But most Sicilian wine is shipped out in tankers as high-alcohol blending wine, to be used by producers in northern Italy and southern France. Sicily is also a major producer of concentrated grape musts, which are made by either cooking down or vacuum-evaporating the juice into a sappy sugar water. These are used for the same purpose as blending wines: to raise the alcohol levels of anemic wines made elsewhere. Of the huge production of Sicilian wine each year, only about 5 percent actually makes it into bottles, and only 2 percent of that is classified as DOC.
This somewhat anonymous wine culture stands in sharp contrast to one of the most richly diverse cuisines in Italy. Having seen more than its share of foreign rulers—including the Saracens, or Moors, who are credited with bringing not just ice cream but its precursor, sugar—and possessed of incredible agricultural resources, Sicily is a sensual feast. Pasta dishes are spiked with the likes of capers, mint, fennel, olives, and red peppers. Seafood is king—be it tuna, pesce-spada (swordfish), sardines, or anchovies—and the preparations are wild: chopped almonds, raisins, and citrus are all found in traditional Sicilian fish preparations, along with many of the other ingredients mentioned above. The prevailing cooking philosophy is agrodolce (sweet and sour), as exemplified by dishes such as caponata, the famous Sicilian casserole of eggplant, zucchini, olives, pine nuts, vinegar, and sugar.
To complement this complex cuisine, however, Sicilians mostly settled for flabby dry whites from Alcamo, on the western end of the island, and coarse, sun-baked reds from a variety of locations, including the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna in the east. Only its sweet wines—Marsala, along with the moscato- and malvasia-based nectars of Pantelleria, Lipari, and elsewhere—had any real market presence.
Along with neighboring Calabria, Sicily best exemplifies the enduring legacy of the latifondo, the system of land distribution and agricultural relationships that dominated the Italian south for centuries. Northern Italy was characterized by the mezzadria (sharecropping) model, where the peasantry at least had a stake in the land they were cultivating. But southern-Italian farms were much more oppressive. Sicily in particular was dominated by a relatively small number of large landowners, most of them noble families, for whom the Sicilian peasants were little more than indentured servants. After Italy became a republic in 1946, the new government attempted to reverse the effects of the latifondo through the agrarian reforms of the early fifties. While a lot of land was appropriated from large landowners and redistributed to peasant families, it didn’t lead to the rise of many private wine estates. Instead, those newly minted landowners who chose to grow grapes either sold their produce to the large Marsala houses or joined a cooperative winery, or cantina sociale. And more so than their counterparts elsewhere in Italy, these fledgling farmers also had the mafia to contend with.
The cantina movement exploded in the fifties and sixties, largely because of the failures of the agrarian reforms. The redistributed plots of land were too small to do individual farmers much good, so the Italian government’s response was to subsidize the creation of cooperatives (not only for wine but other agricultural products). Propped up not only with government money but with contributions from the European Community, the ever-growing legion of co-ops became pumping stations for bulk wine to be shipped north, especially to France, which lost a key supply of blending wine when Algeria declared independence in 1962.
“Whatever vine produced the most tonnage, that’s what the farmers planted,” explains Diego Planeta. He is the president of one of Sicily’s largest co-ops, Settesoli in Menfi, and also the patriarch of the Planeta winery in Sambuca, a private estate run by his daughter, Francesca, and nephew, Alessio. “In the beginning, cooperatives helped a lot, economically, because there were many small farmers in the fifties and sixties who otherwise wouldn’t have found a market for their grapes. Very rarely were cooperatives managed by wine people. They were built and run by politicians. And for a while, they could absorb as much as the farmers could grow.”
This, of course, didn’t last. Eventually, the bulk-wine market began to collapse, particularly when France found other sources for its own blending wines. (To compound grape-growers’ woes, Marsala began to fall out of favor in the market as well.) Only forward-looking co-ops such as Settesoli—which began marketing bottled dry wines in the early seventies—were positioned to survive.
“The result of the co-op system, by and large, was an immense amount of money spent by the community, no professional people coming out of the business, no enterprise, and quality was nonexistent,” Planeta says. “Eventually, about ten years ago, the EC and government subsidies just disappeared altogether. Most of the co-ops went bankrupt, and of those that have survived, most have financial problems.”
The co-op culture was pervasive enough that for much of the last three decades, the commercial wine scene in Sicily—excluding Marsala—was defined by two estates: the Corvo-Duca di Salaparuta property in Casteldaccia, which was controlled by the Sicilian regional government until the spring of 2001 (when it was sold to a private company), and the Conte Tasca d’Almerita estate in Vallelunga, better known as Regaleali. If you asked for a dry Sicilian white in the seventies and eighties, your choices were largely confined to either Corvo’s “Columba Platino” or Regaleali’s basic “Bianco,” two clean, simple whites based on local grapes. For reds, the choices were more interesting, but no less limited: “Duca Enrico” from Corvo-Duca di Salaparuta or “Rosso del Conte” from Regaleali, both of which showcased Sicily’s top native red, nero d’avola, to great effect.
But things have changed, and dramatically. The collapse of the co-op system has given way to a surge in private investment in vineyards and wineries. Many of these newcomers, in fact, are people whose families either grew grapes for or worked at a local co-op. Duca di Salaparuta’s passing into private hands is highly symbolic, because Sicily has been gripped by land fever. “This is one of the few places in Italy where there has been land to be bought, and at a reasonable price,” says Diego Planeta. Well-known wine firms are buying up big plots of land in Sicily, among them the Veneto’s Zonin group (which purchased the 240-acre Principe di Butera estate in 1997), and the Hardy’s wine conglomerate of Australia (which is involved in a highly successful joint venture with Sicily’s Calatrasi). Among other brands, the Hardy’s-Calatrasi partnership is known for the well-priced “Terrale” line of wines, which also includes some bottlings from Puglia.
Early pioneers from within Sicily included the Rallo family of Marsala, who sold their Rallo brand name in the mid-eighties. They then converted their Marsala cantina into a dry-wine facility, creating a range of excellent whites and reds from vineyards in Contessa Entellina, a half-hour inland from the town of Marsala. Another early arrival on the modern wine scene was the Lena family of Castelbuono, a village not far from Cefalù in the northeastern part of the island. The Lenas restored the twelfth-century Abbazia Sant’Anastasia in Castelbuono and introduced a line of mostly red wines in 1987.
In the nineties, it seemed like a new and noteworthy winery was opening every day. The Planeta estate, created from family vineyards that once supplied the Settesoli co-op, debuted its first wines in 1995 and quickly became one of the most acclaimed properties in Italy. Another ’95 debut was Ceuso “Vigna Custera,” a powerful red blend created by Vincenzo, Giuseppe, and Antonino Melia of Alcamo, longtime grape growers for the local co-op who converted a family garage into a boutique winery. Then there’s Salvatore Geraci, an architect by trade, who rescued the all-but-extinct Faro DOC in 1996 with the launch of his Palari-brand wines, sourced from a patchwork of old family vineyards in Messina.
Concurrent with this surge in private investment has been a rather dramatic reduction in the amount of wine Sicily is pumping out: Between 1992 and 2002, total production in Sicily has declined nearly 40 percent, a virtual microcosm of the quantity-for-quality trade-off taking place throughout Italy during the last decade.
“In my day, to sell a bottle of Sicilian wine was a drama,” says Diego Planeta. “Now people are calling this place the Australia of Italy, the California of Italy. A good vintage, in certain areas of the world, is a miracle. Here, we don’t get any rain after February. We have intense heat and sunlight. It’s always windy and dry, so we don’t have problems with rot. We can make great wine every year.”
Much of what you need to know about dry white wine in Sicily can be summed up with this statistic: Of the 330,000 acres of vineyards on the island (the largest total of any Italian region), nearly 60 percent are planted to catarratto, a fairly bland but extremely durable white grape. Catarratto is the base of a number of DOC whites, most notably Alcamo, in western Sicily. But its primary role is as a blending grape in Marsala and, more anonymously, as a staple of bulk-wine production, especially for vermouth houses in Piedmont. Techni-cally, there are two varieties of catarratto—catarratto bianco comune and catarratto bianco lucido—but their differences are subtle. Although catarratto is found only on Sicily, it is the second-most planted grape in all of Italy.
When treated with care, catarratto can have a plush, spicy, almost beeswaxy character reminiscent of viognier, but very few producers are striving for important wines from the grape. It is low in acidity, making it difficult to showcase on its own; even in Alcamo DOC whites, it has lost ground in the blend to other local grapes such as inzolia (also known as ansonica) and grecanico, not to mention the increasingly popular chardonnay.
Aside from Alcamo, of which Rapitalà, Spadafora, and Pollara are making some solid examples, the only other DOC whites of note are those from the Etna zone, which combine catarratto with another variety unique to Sicily, carricante. In Etna, the pickings are similarly slim: Benanti, Murgo, and Barone Villagrande are the top producers, and, while their wines are more aromatic and crisp than the soft, melony wines of Alcamo, they too are lumped among the myriad light seafood whites being produced all over Italy. Because so many DOC wines have been stripped of any real character by producers striving to make as much as they can, the genuinely interesting versions are all but washed away in the deluge.
The benchmark whites of Sicily have long been made outside of DOC parameters, not only because of the difficulties associated with the catarratto grape but because their producers felt that DOC classifications would dilute the power of their brands. The Columba Platino from Corvo, for example, combines 80 percent inzolia with 20 percent grecanico, while Regaleali’s Bianco is a mix of inzolia, catarratto, and a strain of grecanico that the Tasca family says is unique to their estate.
“Inzolia is probably the best of our native grapes on Sicily,” says Giuseppe Tasca, the vineyard manager at Tasca d’Almerita-Regaleali. “In our bianco, we get the fruitiness and aroma from inzolia, the acidity from the Tasca variety, and the body from catarratto. But it is difficult to make a single-varietal wine from any of those three.”
José Rallo, of the Donnafugata estate in Contessa Entellina, agrees. “Inzolia is fundamental to all of our white wines, because it has good fruitiness. But typically we need to pair it with something more aromatic or something with more body.” Donnafugata makes a number of noteworthy blends that incorporate inzolia, including the inzolia-catarratto “Anthilia,” and an exotic mix of inzolia, müller-thurgau, and sauvignon blanc called “Lighea.”
There are, however, some single-variety wines from these indigenous grapes, the best of them from either inzolia or grecanico, a grape many believe to be related to the greco family of the Italian mainland. Of all the Sicilian natives, grecanico has the most penetrating acidity and freshness, even in a climate that can easily overripen just about anything you plant. “Grecanico is one of those classic Italian whites that matures very late, so it’s good for Sicily,” says Francesca Planeta, whose “Alastro” and “La Segreta” white blends combine grecanico with chardonnay.
Given the natural conditions in Sicily, the objective of most new-generation producers is white wines with more power. This has led to more planting of chardonnay, and in turn to the creation of the island’s most celebrated white wine: the rich, barrel-fermented chardonnay of Planeta. “We have the perfect environment for great chardonnay,” says Francesca Planeta, who in a relatively short time has become one of the young celebrities of Italian wine. “The difference in Sicily between now and ten years ago is that people are choosing the grapes that are best suited for this place, and being more careful about how they grow them. If there’s been a change in the quality of Sicilian wine, and I think there has, it’s all due to improvements in technology. The environment was always there.”
Chardonnay is the white grape of the moment in Sicily. In the intense, dry heat of the southern Mediterranean, the grape ripens into a tropical fruit bomb, as exemplified not just by Planeta’s bottlings but by the “La Fuga” Chardonnay of Donnafugata and the oak-fermented inzolia-chardonnay blend called “Bidis” made at Valle dell’Acate, in the southeastern zone of Vittoria. These are wines with the power and extraction of chardonnays of California and Australia, a comparison that is not lost on their makers. “As I travel around the world, I see that people don’t really think of Sicily as being part of Italy,” says Diego Planeta. “They think of it as its own place. And with the huge success of the New World, we’re like a new New World country. Anything goes.”
Practically speaking, the metamorphosis underway in Sicily makes for some highly variable choices in the wine shop. Although the island’s future may well be peachy, pineappley, oak-kissed chardonnays, there are still plenty of Sicilian whites that cut a leaner figure. In many cases, these might be the better choices with some of the aggressively seasoned, citrus-tinged fish preparations of the island, especially crudo (raw seafood). A well-made Alcamo or Etna white, or maybe a varietal wine from inzolia or grecanico, won’t wow you like a barrique-aged chardonnay, but neither will it clash with what you’re eating. As more money and winemaking savvy find their way to the island, even the traditional whites are getting a new look. And as the commercial wine culture grows, the likes of Chile and Argentina are facing more serious competition from Sicily’s new generation, who’ve got seemingly endless space and a generous winemaking climate at their disposal.
Although Sicily still produces a greater percentage of white wines (a statistic skewed by Marsala), the real interest these days is in its deep, dark reds—particularly those made from the nero d’avola grape, whether bottled on its own or in blends with merlot, cabernet sauvignon, and especially syrah, to which it is often compared.
“With our climate, a lot of whites will ripen too fast,” says Giuseppe Tasca of Regaleali. “But these are the perfect conditions for reds.”
Although there are notable exceptions—such as the cool, moist, nearly continental climate of Mount Etna, a still-active volcano where chestnuts and pines grow at the higher elevations—Sicily has three things in abundance that red-wine grapes crave: heat, light, and dryness. At times, the island seems downright desertlike: The harsh North African scirocco kicks up dust and blurs the horizons, seemingly turning the scant summer rainfall to mud before it hits the ground. Prickly pear cacti line the highways, somehow drawing enough nutrients from the parched earth to produce their fiery yellow-orange fruit. “After February or March we hardly get any rain at all,” says Giuseppe Tasca.
Sometimes, as in 1996, it can be too dry. But irrigation systems, fed by man-made lakes, help vintners keep their vines appropriately nourished. Access to water, in fact, is one of the key mitigating factors in the rapid development of Sicilian vineyards, and will ultimately limit just how much new planting there will be. But for those already established, there’s a sense of being in the right place at the right time. “I would rather add the water I need at harvest time than to have too much rain,” says Tasca.
Not that great red wine is a wholly recent phenomenon. Tasca d’Almerita’s “Rosso del Conte” and Corvo’s “Duca Enrico” are legendary Italian wines. Both are based on nero d’avola and both are lush, ageworthy reds that spend at least some time in French oak barriques. Now, not only are they getting some company, but the nero d’avola grape itself is attracting more serious attention.
“In the past, with Rosso del Conte and Duca Enrico, people talked about the wines as brands,” says Count Lucio Tasca, Giuseppe’s father, who was around when the gnarled alberelli (bush vines) of the Rosso del Conte vineyard were first planted, in 1959. “People didn’t mention the grape when they talked about Rosso del Conte. Only now is nero d’avola being recognized.”
By all accounts, nero d’avola is thin-skinned and susceptible to rot, as well as a late-ripener. “For us, nero d’avola is the last one to harvest,” says Guiseppe Tasca. “It matures twenty days later than cabernet. Sometimes we harvest as late as the end of October or the beginning of November.” Many vintners assert that only in Sicily can nero d’avola and other late-ripening varieties—such as cabernet sauvignon—reach proper maturity. “People have tried to plant nero d’avola in other parts of Italy but haven’t had success,” notes Lucio Tasca. “Anywhere you have the chance for rain at harvest, you won’t do well with nero d’avola.”
Other producers, such as Diego Planeta, say that not enough is known about the grape to make this assertion. “Some think that it came to us from the mainland,” Planeta muses, referring to the grape’s other name, calabrese, which suggests a link to Calabria. “How do we know there is not nero d’avola somewhere else under a different name, in the way that grecanico is probably greco or garganega?”
Although there is a smattering of nero d’avola in Calabria, it is essentially Sicily’s alone. Named for a small town west of Siracusa, on the island’s southeast coast, it is believed to have been brought by the Greeks (Siracusa was the second Greek colony on Sicily). It is the undisputed leader among the native red grapes of the island, although there are some excellent wines being made from the spicy, dark-hued nerello mascalese—most notably the Faro DOC blends of Palari and the popular rosato of Regaleali, both of which use the grape as their base. There’s also the tart, bright, strawberry-scented frappato grape, which is combined with nero d’avola in the Cerasuolo di Vittoria DOC wines of southeastern Sicily.
Nero d’avola reds, meanwhile, fall into three main categories: those that are 100 percent nero d’avola, such as the varietal bottlings of the Morgante estate in Riesi, Donnafugata’s “Mille e Una Notte,” Regaleali’s “Rosso del Conte,” and Corvo’s “Duca Enrico”; those that combine nero d’avola with cabernet, merlot, and/or syrah, such as Ceuso’s “Vigna Custera,” Planeta’s “Santa Cecilia,” and the wines of Abbazia Sant’ Anastasia; and those of Cerasuolo di Vittoria, the one historic DOC zone in Sicily with an enduring reputation for quality reds.
Tasting through these diverse wines, it’s difficult to pinpoint the precise character of nero d’avola. Generally speaking, it has a dark, tarry quality, with lots of black fruit aromas highlighted with scents of violets. It’s also rich and well structured, with firm but silty tannins, which prompts many tasters to compare it with syrah.
“Many people think nero d’avola and syrah are related,” says Giusto Occhipinti of COS, a leading estate in the Cerasuolo di Vittoria zone. “There are some who believe that syrah originated in Sicily. The theory is that it is related to nero d’avola and is named for the ‘Sira’ in Siracusa, not Shiraz in Persia.” Whatever its true origins, vintners are finding different expressions of nero d’avola in different soils; some are spicy and firm, like Rhône syrah, others are plusher and juicier, like Aussie shiraz.
Occhipinti is closely studying nero d’avola, not just for his Cerasuolo di Vittoria wines but for his new estate, Vittoria, which will focus solely on single-vineyard nero d’avola. Having done a series of “micro-vinifications” from diverse vineyard plots in his area, he says the extreme southeastern tip of Sicily—where the soils are considerably sandier than those farther inland—is where nero d’avola is at its most potent.
Francesca Planeta is one of a number of producers who, like Occhipinti, believe that the sandy clays of the southeast (namely, the grape’s original homeland west of Siracusa) is the place where nero d’avola reaches its peak. “There are two reasons why we have done more with merlot and cabernet up to this point,” she offers. “First, our main estate in Sambuca has richer clays, and cabernet and merlot simply perform better there. But we purchased vineyard land in Noto [near Avola] because we feel that’s where we can make something interesting from nero d’avola. The other reason we used the international varieties is because we needed to establish a reputation for Sicilian wines. We needed to attract people here with cabernet and merlot. Once we have established ourselves, then we can introduce them to nero d’avola.”
But there is yet another reason why cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and syrah play such a prominent role in Sicily’s new reds. “Strangely enough, with the local varieties such as nero d’avola, we don’t have anything to go on when it comes to clonal material,” says Alessio Planeta. “With the international grapes we had fifty different clones to choose from, so we could start with something of quality right away.”
Until nero d’avola establishes itself in the minds of consumers (and likely even afterward), producers will continue to comple-ment it with international varieties. At Planeta’s vineyards in Sambuca, their focus is still as much on merlot, cabernet sauvignon, and syrah as it is on nero d’avola. At the Abbazia Sant’Anastasia, the Lenas make three blends—“Passomaggio” (nero d’avola with merlot); “Montenero” (nero d’avola with syrah and merlot); and “Litra” (nero d’avola and cabernet)—each of which is slicker than than the last. Other producers, including Donnafugata, Calatrasi, Spadafora, and Colosi, are similarly enamored of this formula.
“To my knowledge, nero d’avola is the best of what we’ve found here in Sicily,” concludes Diego Planeta. “But I have an opinion, which might be wrong, but I think that in a few years’ time the whole world will be talking about Sicilian syrah. It’s just like nero d’avola: It loves the heat.”
Prior to the red-wine revolution of the nineties, Sicily was known principally for its sweet and fortified wines, especially Marsala, whose name (derived from the Arab phrase marsah-el-Allah, or “port of God”) evokes the Arab past of the island and its culture. Sicilians have always had a wealth of wine choices to complement Saracen-inspired sweets such as cannoli (tubes of fried dough traditionally filled with cream cheese, sugar or honey, almond paste, and bits of candied fruit) and cassata (a liqueur-drenched sponge cake topped with sugar, ricotta, almond paste, and, again, candied fruit). Sicily is the first stop in Italy for the sweet-wine aficionado: There’s Marsala, which can be nutty and dry or caramel sweet; Passito di Pantelleria, which captures the flavor of golden raisins in a bottle; and Malvasia delle Lipari, which tastes like fresh-picked apricots.
Although the best versions of each are increasingly scarce, Sicily’s vini dolci not only hail from some of the most exotic locales in the world of wine but are (or were) made by some of Italy’s most colorful personalities. The late Ignazio Miceli (he of the gelato run described previously) was instrumental in promoting the wines of Sicily and especially those of Pantelleria, the scirocco-swept island where moscato grows on close-cropped bush vines set in holes in the ground and protected by stone walls. The (also late) Carlo Hauner, a Milanese designer and artist, fell so in love with the Aeolian isle of Salina (where, incidentally, much of Il Postino was filmed) that he spent years purchasing tiny plots of land on which to grow malvasia. The legend is that it took two thousand separate contracts for Hauner to secure a mere forty acres of land on Salina, which is now controlled by his four children.
And then there’s the excitable Marco DeBartoli, the one well-known artisan producer of Marsala in a town whose glory days are behind it. DeBartoli’s Vecchio Samperi estate, which he founded in the late seventies after working in a number of much larger Marsala houses, is like an art-house movie theater set among the multiplexes. Creations of his such as the long-aged, unfortified “Vecchio Samperi” Marsala, and a luscious Passito di Pantelleria called “Bukkuram,” are unlike any other wines in Italy or beyond.
What ultimately distinguishes the sweet wines of Sicily and its satellites are their places of origin: the dusty port of Marsala, which looks more Moroccan than Italian; the black sands of Pantelleria, the definition of a desert island; and the still-grumbling volcanoes of the Aeolian archipelago, a group of giant pumice stones jutting from the Mediterranean. The exotic flavors of the wines are a direct link to these distant places. And surprisingly, the wines are not that difficult to find.
Forget for a minute the cheap Marsala used to sauce veal cutlets or flavor zabaglione cakes, and forget for a minute the premixed combinations of Marsala and egg cream or Marsala and coffee you might see in a Palermo ice-cream parlor. This is a wine that once stood alongside Sherry, Madeira, and Port as one of the great fortified wines of the world. While highly variable in style and quality, it can still be something special.
Marsala is a confusing category. The wines are categorized according to three variables: their color, their age, and their sweetness level. All Marsalas are either oro (gold), ambra (amber), or rubino (ruby), depending on the grapes they come from. Oro and ambra versions are made from white varieties, including the preferred grillo, the more prolific catarratto, and other local grapes such as inzolia and damaschino. The much rarer rubino versions are made from blends of red grapes, including perricone, nero d’avola (calabrese), and nerello mascalese (plus an allowed percentage of the above white grapes).
The age categories of Marsala are Fine, Superiore, and Vergine/Soleras. Fine Marsalas are the simplest, aged only one year (not necessarily in wood) and typically used for cooking. Superiore Marsalas are more luxurious, aged a minimum of two years (four years for Superiore Riserva) in large oak or chestnut casks. Many Superiore Marsalas carry Sherry-like descriptors such as SOM (Superior Old Marsala) and LP (London Particular), which harken back to Marsala’s days as a British-controlled port.
Marsalas labeled as Vergine or Soleras are the most complex and longest-aged of the three main styles, with a basic Vergine/Soleras spending a minimum of five years in wood and a stravecchio, or riserva, spending a minimum of ten.
Both Fine and Superiore Marsalas can be secco (dry), semisecco (off-dry) or dolce (sweet), whereas Vergine/Soleras Marsalas are always dry, and are often made in the solera method, in which casks of wine of varying ages are blended together. These are the ultimate sipping Marsalas, with the oxidative notes of caramel, nuts, spice, orange peel, and other exotic flavors. A good Vergine or Soleras Marsala has the unctuous aroma of sweet wine, but in the mouth it is bone dry.
Aside from aging and sweetness level, the principal difference among Fine, Superiore, and Vergine/Soleras Marsalas is the method by which they are fortified. In the 1700s, Marsalas and their Spanish and Portuguese counterparts were fortified—usually with grape brandy—so that they could withstand the long sea journey to Britain. The practice continues today, but in various forms. Some producers use either concentrated must, cooked-down must (mosto cotto), or a blend of brandy and fresh grape must called sifone, all of which raise the potential alcohol of the wine while diluting its essential character. In the top-end Vergine or Soleras versions of Marsala, only straight brandy is allowed to fortify the wine—as with great Port, the point is to produce a naturally sweet, powerful wine from exceptionally ripe grapes, wherein the addition of brandy merely arrests the fermentation and adds a few degrees of alcohol.
Because of the various ways in which the wine can be made, producers traditionally stretched the rules in order to stretch production, relying more on cooked or concentrated must (much of which was sourced outside of the DOC zone) and less on good-quality grapes from their own vineyards. Changes in the Marsala DOC discipline in 1984 restricted the use of these additives, and also prohibited the use of the word Marsala on the bottles of egg- and coffee-flavored concoctions. But, as with so much Italian wine, the production excesses of the seventies and eighties damaged the reputation of Marsala so much that production has never rebounded. Although the Marsala DOC is still the most prolific on the island, it is a shadow of its former self, with only a handful of brand-name producers still in operation. Among them are Florio, Pellegrino, and DeBartoli, whose Vecchio Samperi wines have the added distinction of being unfortified; they reach the minimum of 18 percent alcohol naturally, picking up their lusciously concentrated flavors from decades spent in wood. DeBartoli himself likes to drink his wines as apéritifs, maybe paired with roasted almonds, fresh sardines, or some cheese, preferring that the briny, oxidative flavors of the wine mingle with similarly savory flavors. Others might want to try these sippers with a hunk of bitter chocolate, to point up their caramel and nut character.
Although the DOC name cites the island of Lipari as the source, it’s actually Lipari’s neighbor, Salina, that provides the majority of the malvasia grapes used in the commercial production of this nectar of a wine. In the volcanic ash of these Aeolian islands, the malvasia grape plumps into a juicy evocation of the fruits of Sicily, its orangey color and flowery scents bringing to mind citrus blossoms. Most Malvasia delle Lipari, of which the best versions are made by Hauner, Caravaglio, and Colosi (all of which are exported to the United States), is a naturally sweet wine, with a minimum alcohol level of 11.5 percent. (There are richer, more alcoholic passiti incorporating dried grapes, and even a few fortified versions.) Best sipped with a slight chill, they are great with all the classic Sicilian desserts, especially those incorporating fruits: Of all the Sicilian vini dolci, the wines of Lipari, Salina, et al, are the most assertively fruity, and should be treated accordingly.
Moscato (called zibibbo in Sicily, where it is also widely eaten as a table grape), is another widely planted and highly mutated grape, and is the base for the naturally sweet and passito wines of Pantelleria, which is only 52 miles from Cape Bon in Tunisia. Zibibbo is a popular table grape in southern Italy, producing big, bulbous berries despite the hot, dry conditions, which makes it an ideal grape for raisins as well. A good Moscato or Passito di Pantelleria is like biting into the plumpest golden raisin you can imagine.
Because of the harsh breezes off the North African desert, the preferred system of vine training on Pantelleria is the alberello (bush), in which the grape bunches are held close to the trunk of the plant and shaded by a tight canopy of leaves. Even with the protection of this canopy, the grapes are scorched and withered in the sun, then further dried on straw mats during the cool, dry autumn nights after the harvest, to concentrate their sugars. More honeyed and caramel-scented than their Aeolian-island cousin, the “raisin wines” of Pantelleria rival the Vin Santo of Tuscany as accompaniments for biscotti. In addition to Marco DeBartoli’s “Bukkuram,” there are great passiti being made by fireman/winemaker Salvatore Murana, and by the Donnafugata estate, whose “Ben Ryé” bottling is one of the best examples of its type.
There are two other noteworthy moscato wines made on the main island of Sicily, but while DOC zones still exist for each they have all but disappeared from commercial distribution. Moscato di Noto, made in the southeastern Sicilian town of the same name, is considered perhaps the most prized wine of all the Sicilian stickies, but today only about seventy acres of vineyards are registered in the DOC zone. Moscato di Siracusa, an adjacent DOC zone, is also one for the history books, with only about five acres of registered vines still in existence. But should your travels take you to Siracusa, one of the most beautiful towns in southern Italy, you may have the pleasure of encountering one of these endangered species.
PROVINCES: Agrigento (AG), Caltanissetta (CL), Catania (CT), Enna (EN), Messina (ME), Palermo (PA), Ragusa (RG), Siracusa (SR), Trapani (TP)
CAPITAL: Palermo
KEY WINE TOWNS: Marsala; Messina; Noto; Ragusa
TOTAL VINEYARD AREA*: 111,638 hectares, or 275,857 acres. Rank: 1st
TOTAL WINE PRODUCTION*: 7,106,000 hectoliters, or 187,740,520 gallons (3rd)
DOC WINE PRODUCED*: 2.1% (20th)
SPECIALTY FOODS: almonds; pistachios; capers (especially on Pantelleria and the Aeolian islands); citrus fruits (lemons, oranges); tonno (tuna); pesce spada (swordfish).
*2000 figures. Rankings out of twenty regions total (Trentino–Alto Adige counted as one). Source: Istituto Statistica Mercati Agro-Alimentari (ISMEA), Rome.
CATARRATTO: One of the most heavily planted varieties in Italy, and yet it is found only in Sicily. Used in dry white blends from Alcamo and as a key blending ingredient in Marsala. It very occasionally makes interesting varietal wines.
GRECANICO: May be related to greco or garganega from the mainland. Principally a blending variety, it has good acidity and a fresh, appley flavor.
GRILLO: The historic base for Marsala; it is now on the wane.
INZOLIA (ANSONICA): One of the better indigenous Sicilian whites, producing plump, dewy whites in the Alcamo DOC and used in most of the best vini da tavola (VdT) whites, such as Corvo’s “Columba Platino.”
MALVASIA: This well-traveled grape is thought to have been brought to Lipari by the Greeks. It gains uncommon depth of flavor in the volcanic ash of the Aeolian islands.
ZIBIBBO: The local name for muscat of Alexandria, or moscato bianco. This is a large-berried version of moscato used not only for wine but for table grapes and raisins.
OTHERS: CHARDONNAY; SAUVIGNON; MÜLLER-THURGAU; CARRICANTE, used in Etna Bianco DOC whites.
FRAPPATO: Light-colored, cherry-scented native grape with high acidity. It is occasionally made into light, bright reds and rosés on its own or blended with nero d’avola in the Cerasuolo di Vittoria DOC.
NERELLO MASCALESE: A spicy, deep-colored black grape used as the base of the Faro DOC blend and other reds of eastern Sicily.
NERO D’AVOLA (CALABRESE): Sicily’s most prominent native. The wines are deep and rich in black-fruit flavors, with a hint of exotic spice. Many winemakers compare its character to that of syrah, with which it is often combined in blends.
OTHERS: NERELLO CAPPUCCIO, a local blending variety; PERRICONE, a deeply colorful blending variety; SYRAH; CABERNET SAUVIGNON; MERLOT.
Benchmark Sicilian reds such as Corvo’s “Duca Enrico” and Regaleali’s “Rosso del Conte” have been known to be long agers, establishing the native nero d’avola grape as one of the “noble” vines of the Italian south. Great years in the eighties for those wines included 1985 and 1989. In the nineties, a new generation of deep, rich reds from producers such as Planeta and Donnafugata has some collectors making room in the cellars. The great Italian run of vintages between 1997 and 2001 is providing lots of great drinking right now, but, given the New World sensibility of these wines, so are more recent years such as ’03 and ’04.
A wine tour of Sicily would most logically begin in the hectic confines of Palermo—an architecturally diverse city that has been cleaned up considerably in recent years. Then run east to Messina, and make sure to stop in Cefalù along the way; then south to Taormina (in the shadow of Mount Etna) and Siracusa (on the southeastern coast). There aren’t many wineries to visit, but rather an incredible variety of seafoods and other delicacies to eat, plenty of interesting local wines to pair them with, and all of it in settings as dramatic as it gets in Italy. From Milazzo, west of Messina, you can catch the hydrofoil to the islands of Salina and Lipari, home of Sicily’s famous sweet malvasias. Home cooks should also be aware of the excellent cooking school run by Anna Tasca Lanza at the sprawling Regaleali estate in Vallelunga, although that requires a journey inland.
Corvo-Duca di Salaparuta “Columba Platino,” $
Regaleali Bianco, $
Both of these wines include the inzolia and catarratto grapes, Sicily’s two principal white varieties, in varying proportions (inzolia is the dominant variety in each). The Corvo wine in particular is exceptionally clean and fresh, with scents and flavors of green apple. The Regaleali builds on this, offering fleshier flavors of green melon and some citrus. The muted aromas and crisp yet rounded textures of these wines make them excellent apéritif choices, and they also make unobtrusive accompaniments to light seafood dishes.
Donnafugata “La Fuga” Chardonnay, $–$$
Planeta Chardonnay, $$
Here are two increasingly popular restaurant wines, both of which show off the chardonnay grape at its biggest: rich, creamy, juicy, and full of the flavors of tropical fruits (bananas, pineapples, citrus). The principal difference is that the “La Fuga” is not aged in oak, whereas the Planeta wine spends some time in French barriques. These weighty whites need similarly rich food to stand up to them—maybe a thick grilled swordfish steak drizzled with olive oil.
Firriato Nero d’Avola “Chiaramonte,” $
Morgante Nero d’Avola “Don Antonio,” $$
Duca di Salaparuta “Duca Enrico,” $$$
This grouping starts simple, with the plush, spicy rosso from the well-regarded Firriato, then becomes more complex, with two superstar reds of Sicily. If you are following the conventions of this book and seeking out the current vintages of these wines, note that the Duca di Salaparuta wines will be much older, as they are aged for significant periods before release. This tasting will give you a feel for young nero d’avola versus old: See how its juicy blackberry flavors evolve into something more tarry and resiny over time. Other good nero d’avola producers include Morgante and Calatrasi, and the Cerasuolo di Vittoria wines of Valle dell’-Acate and COS are worth checking out, to compare how nero d’avola on its own stacks up against nero d’avola blended with the lighter frappato.
Ceuso “Vigna Custera,” $$$
Regaleali “Rosso del Conte,” $$
Palari Faro DOC Rosso, $$$
Though produced in smaller quantities, these reds represent Sicily’s elite. They are highly variable, each of them evoking a great wine from another part of the world: The Ceuso wine, a blend of nero d’avola, merlot, and cabernet sauvignon, is reminiscent of a good Bordeaux; the Regaleali wine, which combines nero d’avola with another local grape called perricone, is a worthy substitute for Aussie Shiraz; and the Palari Faro, a blend of several indigenous Sicilian varieties, is a Mediterranean cousin to Châteauneuf-du-Pape. All three wines demonstrate how much flavor and power can be packed into a southern-Italian red, without becoming syrupy from overripening. Each is buttressed with some aging in French oak, and it shows. Pair them with something appropriately meaty.
Donnafugata “Ben Ryé” Passito di Pantelleria, $$
Salvatore Murana Passito di Pantelleria, $$
DeBartoli “Bukkarum” Passito di Pantelleria, $$$
Three wines are listed here, and any one of this group is a good orientation to the flavors of moscato passito as made on the remote island of Pantelleria. Plump and sweet, with hints of honey, cinnamon, caramel, and candied orange, these wines taste like some exotic Sicilian dessert in a bottle. They are fruity at their core and quite unctuous, but not so sweet that they’ll clash with siciliano desserts such as cannoli (ricotta-stuffed pastry tubes) or cassata (a rich sponge cake containing a pantry-full of ingredients).
Hauner Malvasia delle Lipari, $$
Cantine Colosi Malvasia delle Lipari, $$
Cool and refreshing, not quite as thick and sappy as the passiti of Pantelleria, the amber nectars of Malvasia delle Lipari are wines with very clear aromas and flavors of ripe apricots. The aromas are also floral and citrusy (think orange blossoms), and there’s a good backbone of acidity to check the sweetness.
Pellegrino Marsala Superiore “Sweet,” $
Marco DeBartoli “Vecchio Samperi,” $$$
Here are two ends of the very broad Marsala style spectrum. One wine is sweet, with a soft texture and plush flavors of almonds and caramel; the other is dry, with oxidative notes similar to those in a good fino or amontillado Sherry. The Pellegrino wine is more often woven into zabaglione cakes than it is sipped on its own, but the latter option should not be ruled out. The DeBartoli wine, like a good Sherry, might be put to use as an apéritif, where its briny acidity and dried fruit-and-nut flavors would complement what might be called a Sicilian answer to tapas: some sharp pecorino cheese, calamata olives, and maybe some classic Sicilian chick-pea fritters topped with anchovies.
To download a PDF of this image, visit http://rhlink.com/vita014
DOCG
DOC
