Italiano
Sicilian kaleidoscope
We often hear that Sicily is a continent, and in the wine world this is very evident by touring the region and tasting its extremely diverse but very territorial wines.
Sicilia en primeur is one of the most important events in the Italian wine world, a key annual focus for understanding enoic Sicily. It comes to life thanks to Assovini Sicilia and its 80 participating members. Nine tours escorted guests through Sicily's wine-growing areas with various visits to wineries and archaeological or monumental sites for life-style enthusiasts (I can't figure out what that means but it's cool evidently).
The last two days were in the fantastic Taormina where on the first day we could attend masterclasses and taste about 400 wines presented (a bit too many) while on the second day we moved to Radice Pura, a nursery of international value, where we attended yet another conference on wine tourism (there was a lot of trending data but few ideas on the elaboration and implementation of the same) and then the meeting with the producers in the stations dedicated to them.
This year for my tour I chose a part of western Sicily of great present and future interest that DoctorWine has been monitoring for some time. It lies between the southern part of the municipality of Monreale and runs along the Belice River to Gibellina. An inland area, therefore, that possesses variable elevation, large temperature ranges, regular rainfall, good water reserves and varied soils that are well suited to various grape varieties. The best expressions of Catarratto are from this area (now it is called Lucido, too bad that among the various biotypes there was Common Catarratto, Lucido Catarratto and Superlucido creating a uniformity of name that only makes confusion; moreover there is the Lucido biotype also of Grillo so to you the comments if not they sue me); Syrah also expresses itself with an uncommon elegance, as do some Perricone and Grillo.
I visited some wineries including a new one: Candido a winery in full generational transition with a nice tension between past and future that presented 2 interesting wines.
Impressive growth of the Feudo Disisa winery with a wonderful 2021 Catarratto Lu Bancu and the Alessandro di Camporeale winery with the crazy 2019 Syrah MNRL. Always solid and reliable the lot of Rapitalà wines with the excellent Alcamo Vigna Casalj.
Included in the tour was Pantelleria with a visit to Donnafugata, which with its Ben Ryè keeps up the island's reputation for sweet wines, born thanks to Salvatore Murana and Marco De Bartoli. Kudos to the winery's communications manager Baldo Palermo who explained the island's values by continually mentioning other producers and talking mostly about territory. A "vision" that we would like to meet more often.
These are the wines that impressed me most at each of the wineries visited. Click on the name to read the fact sheet.
