What’s happening on the volcano?

A tour of Etna estates offers an occasion for reflections in the state of wine there 

The Best in Sicily awards, wonderfully organized by Cronache del Gusto of our friend Fabrizio Carrera, was an astounding success.  Palermo’s magnificent Teatro Massimo was packed with people including all the regional authorities, various mayors and European MPs who gave speeches that were teeming with Sicilian pride. Altogether an amazing atmosphere with speeches that were interesting for both content and vision.

But for us the real party began the next day with a tour of estates on Mt. Etna which included some non-wine related stops to check out some other prize winners. Among these I’d like to single out an incredibly talented young man at the Eolian Hotel restaurant in Milazzo, 22-year-old Davide Guidara, and very interesting hotel and its restaurant, Monaci delle Terre Nere, in Zafferana Etnea.

Aside from some of the wines, what impressed me was the intellectual mentality and industrial plan demonstrated by all the producers we encountered on the volcano no matter what their size. This was the first time that I felt such a strong sense of belonging to and having a vision for a land. We did not visit that many estates but the results were surprising.

The appellation consists of around 2000  hectares but this produces only some two million bottles of wine a year, compared to double that in the area of Barbaresco which more or less the same size. The reason for this, several producers explained, is that many of the vineyards are old and have a low yield because the vines are planted in a somewhat haphazard way. Many other vineyards, on the other hand, are young and have not yet achieved the level of quality one would expect. For me, having  a low yield is not a problem because it ensures stable and relatively high prices for wines that are sufficient to meet the growing demand.

Etna owes a lot to the foresight of those producers who invested there towards the end of the last century, many of whom came from wine-producing areas in other parts of Italy. Up until then, Etna was probably only known for the wines of Benanti , who still had to struggle for recognition. His most famous wine was Pietra Marina, which was a white whereas the real revolution on Etna took place with the red wines made from Nerello Mascalese. Etna’s modern history and success came thanks to the likes of Andrea Franchetti , who already had the Tenuta di Trinoro estate in Tuscany, and Marc de Grazia , who after revolutionizing Barolo as an importer, reinvented Etna as a producer with his Passopisciaro estate. Today almost all of Sicily’s historic producers have interests on Etna and the area has been enriched with the presence of some top quality winemakers.

The recently created Consorzio di Tutela  producers’ association represents over 90% of production. The cost of land on Etna is stable and does not vary much from estate to estate even if the owners have their own idea of the value of the various vineyard plots. The situation is still fluid given how the younger vineyards need time to produce quality wine. There has been a proliferation of wines from specific estates and this risks creating some confusion among consumers given that the area is so vast. The fact that the various estate produce wines different from each other is evident above all in regard to their tannins but efforts are underway to find new winemaking methods for Nerello grapes (Mascalese and Cappuccio) and for aging. The number of estates with more advanced technology and expensive ‘toys’ is increasing and as a result the overall quality is on the rise .

In regard to the whites, there is a consolidated consensus that the zone of Milo  is the best and, in fact, the land there costs about 30% more. Thus it would be a good idea to expand the area of the DOC appellation, above towards the higher altitudes which are better suited for whites.

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