SICILIA DOC
As of October 2011, Italy’s national commission that assesses proposals for legal wine designations (under the auspices of the Ministry of Agricultural and Forestry Affairs) has approved a new islandwide Sicilia DOC. Large Sicilian wineries have championed this development. They assert that the rock-bottom prices and low quality of Sicilia IGT wines, particularly those bottled on the mainland, are degrading the image of Sicilian wine. Only 20 percent of Sicilian wine production is bottled on Sicily. A lot of wine leaving the island in bulk ends up being bottled and sold by mainland bottlers under the Sicilia IGT designation. No one seems to know exactly how much. Sicilians suspect that mainland bottlers not only use illegal blending to construct their Sicilia IGT wines but also illegally blend Sicilian wine into their other Italian appellation wines. The fact that mainland producers are making money by selling Sicilian wine awakens the mistrust of Sicilians, who feel that over the millennia outsiders have misused the island’s natural resources and agricultural products.
The stricter DOC regulations of the new law place greater quality and identity controls over a portion of the wine that has been bottled as Sicilia IGT. It is also expected that this DOC will better position Sicily to consolidate EU, national, and regional funding behind the new appellation. As originally proposed by the established Sicilian wineries, besides Sicilian producers who met the qualifications, only those mainland bottlers of Sicilian bulk wine who had sold it as IGT wine for three years prior to the enactment of the DOC rules would be allowed to use the Sicilia DOC label, provided that they adhered to the new, stricter regulations. But something funny happened on the way to the forum! The final version of the Sicilia DOC disciplinare (“regulation”) approved in Rome conspicuously does not prohibit or restrict off-island bottling of Sicilia DOC wines. In addition, the Italian government accepted a Sicilian proposal for a new islandwide IGT called Terre Siciliane that replaces the former Sicilia IGT.
Sicily would have been better served by a new DOC that strictly required all such wines to be bottled in Sicily. Off-island bottlers should only have been allowed the possibility of using the new Terre Siciliane IGT. In this way, producers who were bottling Sicilia IGT wine under specific brand names could have continued using those brand names but under the new IGT. This would not have damaged the image of such brands in the eyes of consumers. In addition, Sicilian cooperatives would have continued to have a ready market for their bulk wines. Even prior to the adoption of the final Sicilia DOC discipline, many producers making DOC wines within Sicily were opposed to it because they did not want to share the acronym DOC and its associated prestige with large wineries, whether in Sicily or on the mainland. The implementation of the new DOC and IGT designations will apply to wines of the 2012 harvest. Consumers likely will not see Sicilia DOC or Terre Siciliane IGT on labels until after April 2013.
ETNA ERUPTS!
The massive volcano, its unusual climates and soils, and the elegant, refined Etna Rosso wines have given Sicily its most convincing tastes of terroir. Etna wines veer away from international stereotypes. They are unique. But comparisons of Etna red wines to Burgundy or Barolo and Etna white wines to Alsace help us to understand their character.
Before 2000, the wines of Etna, save for those of exceptional producers such as Barone di Villagrande, have largely been discounted because of their low quality. As of 1988, Giuseppe Benanti, a businessman from Catania, resolved to make a fine wine from the grapes of his family’s vineyards on the slopes of Etna. He focused on indigenous varieties, particularly Nerello Mascalese for the red wines and Carricante for the whites. His Carricante-dominated Pietramarina captured the attention of the Italian wine scene. Salvo Foti, whose grandfather had vineyards on the slopes of Etna, was Benanti’s pioneering enologist until the close of 2011. Foti brought with him a love of the mountain and a respect for the Etna culture of family production. He also wrote about the history of Etna, helping to provide a foundation for the explosion of interest in it that was to come.
But as has been so often the case in Sicily, it was two non-Sicilians, Marc de Grazia and Andrea Franchetti, who brought the wines of Etna to the attention of the world. American by birth, Tuscan by origin and current habitation, the longtime wine agent de Grazia had a knowledge of the wines of the world and the world wine market. He pollinated the concept that Etna could be understood in terms of Burgundy. The red “Burgundy” of Sicily, however, did not feature the grape that Tachis had felt would make great wine from Etna, Pinot Noir. It featured the native Nerello Mascalese. Curious about the potential of Etna since the early 1990s, de Grazia had visited the area often and made some prototype vinifications before releasing his first commercial vintage, the 2002 Tenuta delle Terre Nere Guardiola, named for the contrada of origin on the north side of Etna. In 2004 he moved into his own facility. Franchetti, from Rome, also had a U.S. connection. As well as being born there, he had spent time in the United States in the 1980s developing a wine distribution company, which he eventually sold before returning to Italy. He set up his own wine estate, Trinoro, in Tuscany during the 1990s. For many years he had visited eastern Sicily on holiday. In 2000 he bought vineyards in the village of Passopisciaro on the north side of Etna. Passopisciaro became the name of the winery he built there. He first made wine in 2000 from grapes he purchased from farmers on the mountain. Franchetti, a frequent visitor to Bordeaux, initially overlooked the potential of Nerello Mascalese, believing that his favorite variety, Petit Verdot—in his own words, “a prince of a grape”—outclassed it. After making several vintages of Nerello Mascalese side by side with Petit Verdot, he realized that although his Petit Verdot–based Franchetti was a thick, tactile wine in the image of Bordeaux, his Nerello showed uncommon elegance, finesse, and Sicilianness. In 2008 Franchetti created, organized, and financed an event at his estate called Le Contrade dell’Etna. He invited all Etna producers, as well as journalists from Italy and abroad. Le Contrade dell’Etna has showcased the wines of nearly all Etna producers every year since.
De Grazia and Franchetti were essential in getting the message of Etna out to the world, but Frank Cornelissen, a former wine trader from Belgium, has also helped ignite interest. Since 2000, when he first visited Etna, he has tantalized both locals and wine cognoscenti with his boldly intuitive artisanal wines. His first vintage was the 2001.
BACK TO SICILY: INDIGENOUS VARIETIES
The success of Etna wines has helped convince the Sicilian wine community that it should focus more on indigenous varieties. Demands from journalists and the trade for indigenous varietal wines are also driving this change. Through regional and state-owned cloning companies such as the Vivaio Governativo di Viti Americane “F. Paulsen,” experimental wineries at Milazzo and Noto, and the Istituto di Patologia Vegetale at the University of Catania, Sicily has been a pioneer in developing hybrids of Vitis vinifera and American vine species that are viable rootstocks for phylloxera-infested soils.
Historically, Sicily has not conducted much research in developing the gene pool of its indigenous vines. In 2003, however, under the auspices of the region of Sicily’s Department of Agriculture and Forestry, the then-director Dario Cartabellotta assembled a group of agronomists and enologists to study a wide assortment of biotypes of both well-known and largely ignored autochthonous varieties under the project name Development of Autochthonous Sicilian Varieties (Valorizzazione dei Vitigni Autoctoni Siciliani). He developed a collaboration between the University of Milan and the University of Palermo and selected Attilio Scienza, Rosario Di Lorenzo, and Marina Barba to head the research team. Cartabellotta also spearheaded the funding of a state-of the-art research facility in Marsala (Centro per l’innovazione della filiera vitivinicola “E. Del Giudice”) to serve as the program’s center. After developing a comprehensive profile of individual vine varieties and their different biotypes,