Sicily

Sicilian wine's modern shape was set by a collapse. The Consorzio Etna DOC's own history records almost 26,000 hectares of vineyard in 1848 and, between 1880 and 1885, Catania standing as the Sicilian province with the most planted vineyard of all — over 90,000 hectares. Phylloxera arrived, and by the early 1900s the vineyard had receded to about 40,000 hectares. The surface inside the Etna PDO today is just under 1,200. The volcano that now anchors Italian fine wine is a remnant of the volcano that fed the bulk trade, and the remnant is the point: what survived was the high, terraced ground nobody could farm cheaply.

Before the outsiders came the pharmacist. Giuseppe Benanti ran SIFI, the Sicilian pharmaceutical company his father founded, and in 1988 he set up a winery named Tenuta di Castiglione at Castiglione di Sicilia, on Etna's north side, where his great-grandfather was born. He hired a young Salvo Foti as winemaker and brought in Professor Rocco Di Stefano of the experimental oenology institute at Asti and Professor Jean Siegrist of the INRA station at Beaune in Burgundy. His family's Sicilian branch had been on the island since 1734. He died on 1 February 2023, aged 78. Benanti still receives visitors at Viagrande.

Benanti's method was survey before sales. By 1998, ten years in, the winery had become the first on Etna with a presence on every slope of the volcano — a choice that mapped the appellation rather than claiming a corner of it. A five-year trial begun in 2005 isolated four proprietary strains of indigenous Etna yeast by 2010. Pietramarina, made from 90-year-old Carricante vines at roughly 3,100 feet in the town of Milo, led the way for the surge of interest in Etna whites. He also set up the mountain's visitor wine route, la Strada dei Vini dell'Etna, and handed the winery to his twin sons in 2012.

The scale of what followed sits in the register, not in the anecdotes. Etna's producers went from 203 in 2013 to 474 in 2024, and the appellation reached a record 1,347 hectares of DOC vineyard that year. The Consorzio Etna DOC, created in January 1994, now counts 230 members accounting for 95% of all bottled wine and more than 80% of the total vineyard area, producing around 5.8 million bottles a year. Promotion from DOC to DOCG requires at least 51% of producers, collectively representing 51% of the vineyard area, to sign; each DOCG bottle would then carry a numbered state seal.

Marsala begins with a Liverpool trader and a cargo of soap ash. John Woodhouse, 1730-1813, reached Marsala around 1773 to trade barrilla — the soda ash used to produce soap and glass — and was won over by the local high-alcohol wine. Cantine Florio's account is direct: it was not until 1773 that Woodhouse realised its potential, so much so that he decided to send various barrels to England, but adding a good dose of brandy. That addition is the invention. The wine underneath was already aged in perpetuum, a method similar to the solera system used to produce sherry in Jerez.

The trade that followed was British, organised, and written down. English merchants arrived on Sicily's western coasts mainly during the English Decade of 1806 to 1815, when King Ferdinand IV of Bourbon and his court fled Naples and the Napoleonic troops for Palermo. Among them was Benjamin Ingham, 1784-1861, who with his nephew Whitaker held the record for Marsala sales in the world, at least until the mid-nineteenth century. Ingham did not merely buy: from 1830 he gave his grape suppliers written instructions on improving their musts, and in 1837 printed a circular on harvesting to improve wine quality.

Marsala's reputation was made by the Royal Navy. Horatio Nelson ordered 200 pipes — approximately 110,000 litres — to provision his ships, and wrote to Lord Keith that the wine is so good that any gentleman's table might receive it, and it will be of real use for our seaman. Fortification kept it stable in a warm hold, and Sicily never fell to Napoleon, so the supply was not interrupted while other ports closed. Nelson was made Duke of Bronte in 1799, and Woodhouse junior set aside one particularly good cask and named it Bronte Marsala in his honour.

The Italian answer to the British houses was a piece of real estate. In 1833 Vincenzo Florio, 1799-1868, bought a plot of land sited between the Woodhouse and Ingham-Whitaker factories and began making the wine himself. By the late nineteenth century Florio had purchased Woodhouse's firm, among others, and consolidated the Marsala industry; Florio and Pellegrino remain the leading producers today. The same family owned Italy's first shipping company, invented tinned tuna in oil and organised the Targa Florio motor race. The Florio cellars hold more than 3,000 oak casks across four tuff-stone aisles.

Marsala's decline had four causes and no villain. Gambero Rosso's account lists phylloxera, financial crises, world wars and the increasing sobriety of the Royal Navy as what together shrank what was once a vast wine production operation. The end point is familiar from restaurant menus: Marsala is frequently used in cooking, and is especially prevalent in dishes served in Italian restaurants in the United States. The wine that provisioned Nelson's fleet became a sauce ingredient. The same account describes the category today as experiencing a small but notable resurgence.

Pantelleria's vine training was the first agricultural practice UNESCO placed on its intangible heritage list. The traditional practice of cultivating head-trained bush vines, vite ad alberello, was inscribed in 2014 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, transmitted through generations of vine growers and farmers of the Mediterranean island. About 5,000 inhabitants own a plot of land, which they cultivate using sustainable methods. The inscription is not for a wine or a place. It is for a way of holding a plant against the wind, and for the people who keep doing it.

Three rulebooks, three arguments about what Sicily is. Etna DOC, granted in 1968, requires Etna Rosso to be at least 80% Nerello Mascalese with up to 20% Nerello Cappuccio, and Etna Bianco at least 60% Carricante with up to 40% Catarratto; Riserva needs four years, twelve of them in barrel. Marsala DOC, granted 1969, grades by time in wood: one year for Fine, five for Vergine including 56 months in barrel, ten for Vergine Stravecchio including 116. Pantelleria DOC, born as Moscato di Pantelleria in 1971 and renamed in 2013, allows its Passito exactly one grape — Zibibbo, 100%.

A contrada is a property boundary that happens to be a geology boundary. Passopisciaro's own account is blunt: the borders of the contrade reflect old feudal property lines, which are still mapped out on the local land registry. Lava spills devastate the landscape, and each flow leaves a different mineral profile behind. That is why five wines from one estate, made the same way, come from vineyards of different ages, each on a flow with different minerals, grain size and altitude. The consortium describes contrade as countryside districts registered in the production regulations, which producers may specify on their labels.

Two numbers are both correct, and the difference is legal. The Etna production code has recognised 133 contrade since 2011, and the consortium's terroir page still carries that figure. In November 2022 the consortium published an updated area map that raised the mapped count by nine individual vineyards to 142, spread across eleven municipalities — 41 in Castiglione di Sicilia, 25 in Randazzo, 20 in Zafferana Etnea. The nine additions wait on the statutes. The DOCG rewrite is the instrument that would fold them into the code, and the consortium has said the recognised count will increase when it does.

Etna's four slopes are four climates on one mountain. The northern slope carries the highest number of producers and the gentlest gradients. The eastern slope overlooks the Ionian Sea, is the most exposed to rain and wind, and grows bush vines on small terraces up to 900 metres, with Carricante dominant. The south-eastern slope is a field of eruptive cones, now all extinct. The south-western is furthest from the sea and swings hardest in temperature, with plantings above 1,000 metres. Across all of them the day-night gap can reach 20-25C, on a cone topping 3,300 metres above a base roughly 45 km wide.

Etna's old-vine story has a date and a threshold. Tenuta delle Terre Nere records that phylloxera officially arrived on Etna in 1881 and destroyed a large number of vines, and that the volcanic soil, thanks to the large presence of silicon, favoured the conservation of many vines but very few whole vineyards. The estate sets the bar plainly: to be defined prephylloxeric a vineyard must be older than 140 years, measured as of 2021. Terre Nere holds less than one hectare that qualifies, in Contrada Calderara Sottana. Its 45 hectares otherwise run 50 to 100 years old, across 30 plots in nine contrade.

Ungrafted vines are still being planted here, which is the unusual part. Frank Cornelissen farms about 24 hectares, 13 of them old vines in the free-standing alberello bush system, and plants his new vineyards without grafts, using a selection of his own original ungrafted stock. Graci works between 600 and 1,000 metres at 6,000 to 10,000 vines per hectare, with some vines on their own roots. Passopisciaro replanted its long-abandoned terraces at 12,000 vines per hectare on thin lava soil. High density and bush training are the mountain's answers to wind, thin soil and terracing.

Nerello Mascalese's parentage is half-solved, and the solved half is Sangiovese. An Italian DNA-typing study published in 2008 — Crespan, Calo, Giannetto, Sparacio, Storchi and Costacurta, in Vitis 47 (2), 97-104 — showed a close genetic relationship between Sangiovese and ten other Italian grape varieties, Nerello among them. On that evidence it is likely that Nerello is a crossing of Sangiovese and another, so far unidentified, grape variety. The variety covers 2,991 hectares, predominantly in Sicily, and reference guides describe it as light in colour and tannic. Its blending partner Nerello Cappuccio, also called Nerello Mantellato, ripens earlier and is darker but less tannic.

The Etna disciplinare is short and consequential. Etna Rosso takes a minimum 80% Nerello Mascalese and a maximum 20% Nerello Cappuccio. Etna Bianco takes a minimum 60% Carricante and a maximum 40% Catarratto. Etna Bianco Superiore raises Carricante to a minimum 80% and may be produced only in the commune of Milo, on the eastern slope. Rosso Riserva needs four years' ageing including twelve months in barrel. Carricante is planted on only 205 hectares and grows almost exclusively in Sicily, so the whole Superiore category rests on a very small base of vines.

Marsala's rulebook separates the sauce from the wine, in months. Fine needs one year, eight of them in barrel. Superiore needs two years, twenty in barrel; Superiore Riserva four years, forty-four in barrel. Vergine needs five years including 56 months in barrel, and Vergine Stravecchio ten years including 116. The dividing line is sweetening: Fine and Superiore in the Ambra style may take boiled must, concentrated must or sifone, while no additions of must or sifone are allowed for Marsala Vergine at all. Rubino, the red style, needs at least 70% Nerello Mascalese, Nero d'Avola or Perricone.

Marsala's labels still carry the shorthand of the export trade. Permitted indications include I.P. for Italia Particolare on Marsala Fine and, on Superiore, G.D. for Garibaldi Dolce, L.P. for Londra Particolar and S.O.M. for Superiore Old Marsala. They name the markets the wine was cut for and the age it was sold on. Marsala DOC covered 1,462 hectares in 2021, drawn from Ansonica, Catarratto, Damaschino and Grillo among the whites, with Nerello Mascalese, Nero d'Avola and Perricone for Rubino. The denomination itself was granted in 1969.

The method is a shape dug into the ground. UNESCO's description sets out the phases: the ground is prepared by levelling the soil and digging a hollow to plant the vine; the main stem is then carefully pruned to produce six branches, forming a bush with a radial arrangement; the hollow is constantly reshaped to ensure the plant is growing in the right microclimate. The wine grapes are then harvested by hand during a ritual event starting at the end of July. The growers, male and female, practise vite ad alberello under harsh climatic conditions, and no machine can do any part of it.

One island, one grape, one wine. Pantelleria DOC began as Moscato di Pantelleria DOC in 1971 and was renamed in 2013; it covered 430 hectares in 2021. Its Passito must be 100% Zibibbo and reach a minimum 14% alcohol against 20% potential — the gap between those two figures is the sugar left in the glass. Zibibbo is Moscato di Alessandria, a member of the large Muscat family and an offspring of Moscato Bianco, considered an ancient vine that originated in North Africa. In Italy, wine is made from it on Pantelleria; it is also grown in Calabria and elsewhere in Sicily.

Most Sicilian wine comes from none of the three appellations above. Sicilia DOC, which may be produced anywhere on the island, was upgraded from IGT to DOC in 2011 and covered 24,600 hectares by 2022 — roughly nineteen times the area of Etna DOC. Set against the island's 119,250 hectares of total vineyard, Etna, Marsala and Pantelleria together account for a small fraction of what Sicily grows. The other names on the map include Faro, Noto, Menfi, Alcamo, Eloro, Monreale, Malvasia delle Lipari and Moscato di Siracusa.

Sicily's only DOCG is a blend of two reds that do opposite things. Cerasuolo di Vittoria, a DOC from 1973 and a DOCG since 2005, requires 50-70% Nero d'Avola with 30-50% Frappato, across just 163 hectares. Nero d'Avola's official name is Calabrese, though almost all of it grows in Sicily and the world knows it by the name of the Sicilian town of Avola. Frappato is low in tannin, light bodied and light in colour, and grows exclusively in Sicily, on 821 hectares.

Between 2000 and 2005, four outsiders bought into a mountain nobody wanted. Andrea Franchetti, a Roman with a Tuscan estate behind him, restored an abandoned farm and cellars on the north slope in 2000 and replanted at 12,000 vines per hectare. Frank Cornelissen, a Belgian, set up in 2001; his own site still describes Etna at that moment as a wine region still undiscovered. Marc de Grazia released the first Tenuta delle Terre Nere wines in 2002, from 45 hectares bought two years earlier. Alberto Aiello Graci founded his estate in 2005. Club Oenologique counted a mere eight winemakers working the slopes when de Grazia arrived.

One sub-hectare parcel on Etna carries a farmer's name. Tenuta delle Terre Nere's pre-phylloxera vineyard in Contrada Calderara Sottana has a second name, la vigna di don Peppino — the estate's tribute to the farmer who made it possible, cultivating it with infinite affection and competence for almost 70 years. The vines are over 140 years old and ungrafted, and they reached the current owners healthy because one man kept them alive across most of a century. The estate's own phrase for what the parcel produces is the quintessence of Nerello and its location.

One producer answered the collapse by removing the fortification. Marco De Bartoli's Vecchio Samperi is 100% Grillo from 3,500 vines per hectare planted between 1970 and 1996 in Contrada Samperi, picked and selected by hand, soft pressed and fermented with wild yeasts in oak and chestnut barrels. It is aged by the perpetuum method, young wine added to wine already ageing in barrel so that vintages blend into one another. Grillo itself is a crossing of Catarratto and Zibibbo. The Samperi cellar sits about nine miles from central Marsala and opens Monday to Friday, closed weekends and bank holidays.

Donnafugata's Ben Ryé is the reference bottle for the style: a Passito di Pantelleria DOC from Zibibbo, aged in tanks for around five months and in bottle for at least sixteen before being marketed. The house's own tasting note for the 2023 lists dried grapes, apricot, citrus fruit and candied orange peel, followed by hints of Mediterranean maquis. Seeing where it is made takes planning. The Khamma winery opens only from 28 May to 30 September, Monday to Saturday, and its tastings run from €40 to €70 a head (July 2026), the 75-minute library flight sitting at €55.

Andrea Franchetti died in Rome in December 2021 at 72, after what a spokesperson called a long illness, leaving behind four adult children. Robert Camuto, who had known him since 2008, described him in Wine Spectator as visionary, generous, eccentric, non-conformist, passionate, iconoclastic, brutally honest, observant, self-schooled and irreverent. His mother was an American heiress who insisted on giving birth to her son in an American hospital in New York; at 16 he quit high school intending to cycle to Afghanistan, sold the bike in Greece and hitchhiked the rest of the way. He planted his first vines in Tuscany in 1991.

Two of Franchetti's neighbours summed up what he changed. Alberto Aiello Graci told Wine Spectator that Andrea brought us the idea that it was possible to make the greatest wine in the world here on Etna. Frank Cornelissen, speaking the evening he heard the news, said Andrea represented unconditional love for this place. Graci said something comparable about Giuseppe Benanti after his death: Pippo Benanti was a charismatic, visionary and ambitious winegrower. Etna's two founding reputations were both described, by the same working producer, in terms of belief rather than technique.

The event that made the contrade legible was invented by a winemaker, not a committee. Le Contrade dell'Etna was created in 2008, when Andrea Franchetti turned a visionary idea into the most important wine showcase on the mountain, built on the en primeur ritual imported from Bordeaux. Wine Spectator records him hosting the first editions as a mentor and impresario in the emerging wine scene on Etna's north face, a day-long tasting that grew every year. Passopisciaro began bottling its top sites separately from 2008 as well, helping usher in a cru system on Mount Etna.