The World of Sicilian Wine. Bill Nesto

lived in Paris, and of Louis Oudart, the French enologist of Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, a Piedmont politician who in 1861 became the first prime minister of Italy. Alliata hired the French technician Giovanni Lagarde and bought new French presses, whose design made Corvo white wine delicate and fresh tasting. It was a great contrast to the ambertinted, high-alcohol, coarse-textured white wines typical of Sicily. After the unification of Italy in 1860, fifty thousand bottles of Corvo, half of the annual production, were sold in Sicily and the other half on the Italian mainland. By 1876, Corvo white and red were being exported to America and northern Europe. Some bottles even reached Australia. The wines won numerous awards at competitions and fairs around the world, medaling in Paris in 1878, Melbourne in 1881, and Bordeaux in 1882. Corvo white, according to the British consul Stigand, was held in higher esteem than the red. He likened it to a “white Burgundy, though heavier in the palate than Chablis.” The red Corvo was “pure” and “like a strong Burgundy” “but does not keep very well.”¹⁴ Stigand also compared Corvo sweet wine to Sauternes. In 1889, Alliata became the first president of the Circolo Enofilio Siciliano.

      Some forty-eight kilometers (thirty miles) southeast of Palermo at Montemaggiore, Prince Baucina planted vine cuttings from the famous Rheingau wine town of Johannisberg in the vineyards on his property, La Contessa. These faced northeast, north, and northwest at 550 meters (1,804 feet) above sea level on the slopes of a mountain. The exposition and high elevation guaranteed temperatures that, though warmer than those of the Rheingau, would have been suitable for these vine varieties (which should have included Riesling, although there is no specific mention of it). According to Stigand, La Contessa's clayey soil resembled that of Johannisberg.¹⁵ The king of Italy had the emperor of Germany sample La Contessa's wine, though there are no records of his comments. Baucina fermented his wine in cask rather than in vat and let it mature in cask for three and a half years, with many rackings. It was reputed to be light and delicate. He sold his wine in fluted bottles in twelve-bottle cases from stores in Palermo, Rome, and Naples.

      

      For about twenty years bracketing the turn of the twentieth century, the Tasca family bottled a wine named after their villa, Camastra, at the southwest edge of the Conca d'Oro, the semicircular plain that encompasses Palermo. The white Camastra was principally a Catarratto and Inzolia blend. Perricone, Nerello Mascalese, and Nero d'Avola dominated the red Camastra. These wines won awards such as a Medal of Honor at the Syracuse Exposition of 1871 and were sold in Europe and America.

      About fifteen miles west of Palermo, Duc d'Aumale produced a wine called Zucco. He was a Frenchman, Henri d'Orleans, who came to Sicily in 1853 and acquired the six thousand hectare (14,826 acre) Lo Zucco estate four miles south of the village of Terrasini. He brought cuttings from Spain, the Rheingau, and Bordeaux, planted native varieties such as Perricone and Catarratto, and employed French technicians, including a viticulturist and an enologist. He began planting vineyards in 1860. As of 1889 he had reached about two hundred hectares (about five hundred acres) and was employing some five hundred to six hundred workers. He made at least two white wines, one called Moscato Zucco or Lo Zucco, which was very aromatic and sweet, with 15 to 18 percent alcohol, and Lo Zucco Secco, made with the Catarratto grape variety and much like a Marsala: dry and amber colored, with 16 to 17 percent alcohol. He also made red wines, but these were less highly esteemed. The British consul Stigand said the sweet white Zucco was more similar to Sauternes than to Sherry or Marsala.¹⁶ It was in such demand in France that it was not available in Palermo. In 2011 a Palermo wine company, Cusumano, released a Moscato dello Zucco inspired by d'Aumale's sweet white. Cusumano's first vintage of this wine was the 2007. Though Cusumano uses Moscato Bianco, as the Moscato dello Zucco brand registered by the Istituto Regionale della Vite e del Vino (IRVV) requires, the historical Moscato Zucco used raisined Moscato Giallo.¹⁷

      Stigand also reported on the wine Tornamira, produced by Cavaliere Melchiorre Striglia, who was originally from Piedmont. About five miles southwest of Zucco, at the village of Tornamira near the large town of Partinico, Striglia set up an estate of seventy hectares (173 acres). His vineyard, planted in the mid-1870s, was at six hundred meters (1,969 feet) above sea level on a slope facing northwest. Stigand describes red Tornamira as similar to a “clean, full-bodied Burgundy.”¹⁸

      Near Zucco and Tornamira is an ancient Moorish castle, Castel Calattubo. It is deserted, sits atop a cliff, and is visible from highway A29, which connects Palermo to Marsala. Principe don Pietro Papé di Valdina named his wine after this castle. His vineyards of some thirty hectares (seventy-four acres) were on slopes overlooking the Bay of Castellammare. The white Castel Calattubo contained 14 to 15 percent alcohol. Stigand described it as “one of the finest of Sicilian white wines,” even more delicate than Corvo white.¹⁹ It was made from Catarratto and kept two years in barrel and one in bottle. It won gold medals at several international exhibitions, including the one that the Palermo Chamber of Commerce awarded at that city's first Grand Sicilian Fair and Enological Exposition. In 1898 Castel Calattubo was served at a court reception in Rome for King Umberto I of Italy, along with a Gattinara from Piedmont and Champagne.

      

      Near Mezzojuso about twenty miles southwest of Palermo, at an altitude of 550 meters (1,804 feet), Marchese Policastello made both red and white wines called Castel di Mezzoiuso. At the Grand Sicilian Fair and Enological Exposition at Palermo in 1889, one of these won a silver medal. Stigand describes the white Mezzoiuso as “something similar in flavour to a Chablis, with a slight dash of Sauterne; the red wine could not be distinguished from a good Bordeaux.”²⁰

      The British consular reports of this epoch catalog several more noteworthy Sicilian wine producers. Cavaliere Salvatore Salvia at Casteldaccia made a white wine called Vino Navurra from Inzolia and a red wine from the Perricone variety. He exported his wines to France, Germany, and the north of Italy. Pietro Mirto Seggio of Monreale made a wine named Renda after its contrada of origin. He fitted out his cellar with three state-of-the-art Mabille presses from France. In 1889 the Italian government awarded several enologists in the province of Palermo for the modernity and cleanliness of their wine-making facilities. Seggio and his technician, Signore Saluto, both won silver medals. Edoardo Alliata's winery and Giovanni Lagarde both won bronze.

      At Mazara del Vallo, south of Marsala, Vito Favara Verderame, a British vice-consul, established a large winery, Fratelli Favara e Figli, which made a wine called Irene. Stigand reported that it tasted much like white Zucco.²¹ Fratelli Favara also made Sicilian “Champagne.” At the Grand Sicilian Fair and Enological Exposition at Palermo in 1889, the company won honorary medals for Irene and its “Champagne.”²²

      For the Etna area circa 1889, the British vice-consul Robert O. Franck singled out Baron Antonio Spitaleri as the most important winegrower. He had facilities and 150 hectares (371 acres) of vineyards between Adrano and Biancavilla on the southwest slopes. With grapes coming from elevations of between eight and twelve hundred meters (2,625 and 3,937 feet), he made a range of wines, including a Pinot Nero-based Sicilian “Champagne,” a Sicilian “Cognac,” and an Etna Rosso. He exported to both America and India. In 1888 he made seven thousand export shipments of his wine, some in cask and some by the case.²³ At the Grand Sicilian Fair and Enological Exposition at Palermo in 1889, Spitaleri won silver medals for his Etna Rosso and his “Champagne.”

      On the western flank of Etna, Alexander Nelson Hood, a distant heir of Admiral Horatio Nelson, made great investments in wine production at a farm in the Gurrida contrada near his family estate, Castello Maniace. Ferdinand III, the Bourbon king of Naples, had granted the castle and its grounds (along with the title “the first Duke of Bronte") to Admiral Nelson in 1799 for his service protecting Sicily against the advances of Napoleon. Hood inherited the estate in 1868. During the 1870s, he tested the suitability of various foreign varieties to the soil and climate of his ninety-seven hectares (240 acres) of vineyards. He brought vines from the island of Madeira, from Bordeaux and Roussillon in France, and from Spain, particularly the area of Granada.²⁴ He finally settled on Grenache Noir. He had the assistance of two French technicians. Before vinification, the grapes were destemmed and damaged berries culled. The “winepressers” wore moccasins of gutta percha, a natural latex with properties similar to those of rubber, while they gently trod the grapes. Asepsis