Victim of prejudice

The victim in question is Nero d’Avola that, as demonstrated at the recent Discovery Nero d’Avola event, can have many sides to it that are far from its old image as a rustic and muscular wine.

Some prejudices die hard even in the world of wine. It would be easy to draw up a long list of wineries, areas of production, enologists and wines that have been victims of bias by critics and the public and sometimes both. I would not have thought that this would be the case for a varietal, what’s more one of the most important and historic ones for a whole region. I am referring to is Nero d’Avola which has participated in all the “revolutions” that have taken place in Sicily over the past 40 years and yet has been unable to rid itself of the image of having a questionable rustic aroma and a rather muscular mouthfeel with dense and often rough tannins.

Despite the fact that over the years many producers have “ennobled” this grape with some top quality wines (we have even singled many of them out in our Essential Guide to Italian Wine), its negative reputation has persisted and even if its level of production is very high, it is still one of the least sampled at leading tastings of Sicilian wines.

The Sicily DOC association recently organized a three-day event dedicated to Nero d’Avola to showcase the advances producers have made with this varietal, with new interpretations based on the effect different terroir and altitudes have on this grape. A lot could be said about the methods used to organize the tastings, in regard also to fermentation and aging that were totally unspecified (why?), which would have underscored differences that would certainly have gone beyond the point they were trying to make; but let’s look at the results.

Many of these were quite reassuring, with Nero d’Avola showing how adaptable and responsive it is to different soils and altitudes, as well as fermentation and aging methods. And while there are still those dense and bold wines with aromas of olive paste, capers and dark notes, the grape also produces floral and fruity wines with simple and vertical mouthfeels, while others offer sensations of Mediterranean shrubs and red fruit and still others citrus fruit. The mouthfeel always has tamed even if youthful tannins and the flavor is nicely structured and never cloying. In other words, Nero d’Avola wines can be very different from each other and they are out there to be discovered. And so it is impossible not to find one to your liking.