Sicily is usually described as hot, and for most of the island that is accurate. But any Sicily wine region guide that stops there cannot explain Etna, where vineyards climb past 3,000 feet on an active volcano and pick their red grapes in late October, weeks after growers on the coastal plain have finished.
The island holds two viticultures that barely speak to each other. One is a cool, high, rain-fed mountain region; the other is a warm, flat, sun-driven one that spent two centuries supplying fortified wine and blending wine to the rest of Europe.
Reading the island as one place is what makes Sicilian labels confusing. Reading it as two, split roughly along a line from Messina down to Ragusa, makes almost everything on the shelf legible.
Two islands in one
Sicily has more land under vine than most Italian regions and, for a long stretch of the twentieth century, sold much of that crop as anonymous bulk wine. The turn toward bottling under its own name is recent enough that many of the estates driving it were founded in the past forty years.
A January 2014 club issue set out the reason the change came so late: the end of feudalism arrived in Sicily as late as 1949, when the size of large rural estates was finally capped and the surplus land sold off and handed to tenant farmers. Land tenure, not climate, is most of why quality bottling took another generation.
Etna, a cool region on a hot mountain
Etna is a composite volcano, which the United States Geological Survey defines as a steep conical volcano built by the eruption of viscous lava flows, tephra and pyroclastic flows. Layer on layer of both is exactly what growers plant into.
An August 2013 club issue put the scale plainly, calling it the tallest active volcano on the European continent, nearly 11,000 feet high, whose lower slopes carry extensive orchards and vineyards on fertile volcanic soils. Vineyards run from roughly 400 meters up toward 1,100.
Altitude does what latitude will not. Nights are cold, the growing season is long, and the harvest on the upper contrade often runs into November, which is why Etna reds carry acidity and pale color that read as northern rather than southern.
Reading the contrade
The appellation wraps the mountain in a horseshoe, open on the western side, and each flank behaves differently. The north around Randazzo and Castiglione is the coolest and latest; the east above Milo catches the most rain on the mountain; the south is warmer and ripens earlier.
A 2011 ministerial decree mapped 133 contrade with defined borders inside the DOC, and a wine may carry a contrada name only if all its fruit came from that parcel. It is the same logic as a Burgundian climat or a Langhe cru, applied to a volcano.
A May 2014 issue profiled one small Etna estate as a producer of only 1,000 cases, founded in 2004, with vineyards on the mountain itself. Scale on Etna is generally small, because the parcels are.
The grapes and the rules
Etna DOC was created in August 1968 and was the first denomination on the island, with Marsala following within the year. Etna Rosso is at least 80 percent Nerello Mascalese, with Nerello Cappuccio permitted up to 20 percent.
Etna Bianco is at least 60 percent Carricante, usually filled out with Catarratto. Etna Bianco Superiore requires 80 percent Carricante and may be made only in the commune of Milo, on the wet eastern flank — a single-village rule of a kind Italy rarely writes.
| Trait | Etna | The warm west |
|---|---|---|
| Elevation | About 400 to 1,100 meters | Sea level to low hills |
| Soil | Layered lava, ash and pumice | Limestone, clay and sand |
| Main red | Nerello Mascalese | Nero d’Avola, Perricone |
| Main white | Carricante | Grillo, Catarratto, Inzolia |
| Harvest | Late October into November | August into September |
| Signature wine | Etna Rosso and Bianco | Marsala |
The warm west and why Marsala exists
West of Palermo the island flattens, dries and heats up. Trapani province holds a great deal of Sicily’s vineyard, alongside salt pans that have been worked since antiquity.
Marsala was created in 1773 by the English merchant John Woodhouse, who fortified local white wine with spirit so it would survive the sea voyage home. The method was borrowed from Port and Sherry, and it worked because the base wine here is already high in sugar and low in acid.
A March 2012 issue recorded a partnership formed in 2002 to produce the classic wines of Marsala on the western coast, farming vineyards the family had worked for generations. Serious Marsala runs from Fine through Superiore to the long-aged Vergine styles, and has almost nothing in common with the cooking version.
The southeast corner
Between the mountain and the west sits a third zone worth knowing. Cerasuolo di Vittoria became Sicily’s only DOCG in 2005 and is a blend rather than a varietal wine: 50 to 70 percent Nero d’Avola for structure, 30 to 50 percent Frappato for perfume and lift.
A May 2016 issue described a winery there founded in 1981 on the Bidini estate in the province of Ragusa by two families from ancient eastern Sicilian winemaking stock. Nero d’Avola itself takes its name from the town of Avola, further along the same coast.
The wider Sicilia DOC, upgraded from IGT in 2011, now covers the whole island and is where most of the varietal bottlings sit. It is the safety net beneath everything above.
Choosing with a Sicily wine region guide at the table
Etna Rosso behaves like a mountain red: high acid, fine tannin, pale in the glass and savory rather than sweet. It suits roast pork, mushrooms, tuna and lamb, and it takes a slight chill better than most reds its weight.
Carricante and Grillo both hold acidity, which makes them the obvious partners for the island’s fried fish, anchovies and caponata. Nero d’Avola from the warmer zones is the one that handles grilled red meat and tomato-heavy sauces.
Dry Marsala belongs before or after the meal, with almonds, aged cheese or nothing at all. The club’s Italian winery profiles list the Sicilian estates it shipped in each year it ran.
Sicily FAQ
Why do Etna reds taste lighter than other southern Italian wines?
Altitude and picking date. Vineyards sit hundreds of meters above the plain with cold nights and a season running into November, so the fruit ripens slowly and keeps its acidity. Nerello Mascalese is also naturally thin-skinned and pale.
Is Marsala only for cooking?
No, and the cooking bottles are the reason people think so. Dry Vergine and Superiore Marsala are aged fortified wines meant to be drunk, and they are among the least expensive aged wines in Italy for what they are.
What does a contrada name on an Etna label mean?
That every grape in the bottle came from that one mapped parcel on the mountain. There are 133 of them with defined borders, and the name is only permitted when the wine is sourced entirely from within it.
Is Nero d’Avola grown on Etna?
Rarely, and it is not permitted in Etna Rosso. It belongs to the warmer, lower parts of the island, particularly the southeast, and its ripeness and dark color are the opposite of what Etna produces.
Sicily makes sense once the island is read as two places rather than one. A volcano that behaves like a cool-climate region, and a hot lowland that turned its ripeness into fortified wine centuries ago. The Italian wine regions hub sets it beside Campania, the mainland’s other volcanic region, while Lake County makes a comparable case for altitude and volcanic ground in California.