ASSOVINI: A DYNAMIC QUALITY WINE LOBBY OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM
Assovini, founded in 1998, is a dynamic marketing and lobbying organization of about sixty-five highly visible Sicilian wineries. It pressed politicians to push forward the Sicilia DOC. In 2010 it applied for and won EU matching funds for seven projects that promote Sicilian wines in overseas markets (Switzerland, Canada, Japan, the United States, Russia, China, and Brazil). It organizes promotional events for its members, such as “Sicilia en Primeur,” which draws journalists to Sicily from around the world to taste the wines of the most recent vintage and those already in commerce. Of the original nine founders, only Tasca d’Almerita, Settesoli, and Donnafugata remain. Giacomo Rallo was Assovini’s first president, in 1998. He was followed by Lucio Tasca d’Almerita and then Diego Planeta, who served from 2008 to 2011. In 2011 Antonio Rallo, a son of Giacomo Rallo, became the new president. The naming of Antonio Rallo, in his forties, symbolizes the generational change occurring in Sicily and, perhaps more importantly, the continuing powerful role of his family, along with the Tascas and the Planetas.
FORWARD TO THE PAST
From 1995 to 2010, several high-profile Sicilian producers expanded their interests by buying vineyards in historic wine zones. The wines they then created highlighted those zones, their histories, and the associated indigenous grapes. The two principal protagonists were Planeta and Tasca d’Almerita. Planeta has a policy of vinifying and bottling in each area where it owns vineyards. In 1997 it moved beyond its birthplace in Sambuca di Sicilia near Menfi and developed vineyards and a winery on land that it already owned in Vittoria. It now makes a best-selling Cerasuolo di Vittoria. A year later Planeta purchased vineyards in Noto, then built a winery there, where it makes two historic wines, a Nero d’Avola (Santa Cecilia) and a Moscato di Noto. In 2010 it released a 2009 Carricante white wine from vineyards on Etna that it had purchased and planted several years before. Moreover, it has secured a long-term lease on a site just outside the city of Milazzo on the northeast coast, where it plans to bring new life to the ancient Roman cru of Mamertino. Mamertino is a DOC, but the existing producers do not have the dynamism or capital to develop the appellation. Planeta plans to build wineries both on Etna and in Milazzo.
Tasca d’Almerita is the other winery reaching into historic sites, from its base at Regaleali in Vallelunga in the center of Sicily. It bought five hectares (twelve acres) of vineyards on the island of Salina in the Aeolian Islands, where it makes a sweet white wine, Capofaro. Though not labeled a Malvasia delle Lipari DOC, this is very similar in style to one. Tasca d’Almerita plans to build a winery on Salina. The company has also purchased vineyards on Etna to make Tascante, an Etna Rosso DOC. It vinifies the grapes from Sallier de la Tour, an estate in Camporeale, and markets the resulting wines. It also has an agreement to buy grapes grown on the island of Mozia, near Marsala. Mozia was once a major seaport of the Phoenicians. Tasca d’Almerita’s Mozia wine features the island’s Grillo grapes.
Other wineries that have made similar expansions into historic areas during this period are Firriato, Duca di Salaparuta, Gulfi, and Benanti. Donnafugata launched its Pantelleria project in 1989 and built a winery on the island in 2002.
THE MODERN IRVV
Senator Calogero Mannino, an ex–agricultural minister and a Christian Democrat, had recommended both Diego Planeta and Marco De Bartoli as president of the IRVV. In 1997 Leonardo Agueci took De Bartoli’s place as president and Elio Marzullo assumed the role of director. They provided continuity and stable leadership until 2003. From 2003 to 2006, political upheavals left the IRVV without a president or a director general. In that vacuum, an administrator simply kept the agency in operation. In 2009 Dario Cartabellotta became the director, working under Agueci, who had returned as president. In November 2011, the Istituto Regionale Vini e Oli di Sicilia (IRVOS) was created to take the place of the IRVV and to promote Sicilian olive oil. Cartabellotta is its director general. IRVOS has continued the IRVV’s research, principally on viticultural and vinification techniques. It sets up conferences promoting the Sicilian wine industry and manages the Sicily Pavilion at Vinitaly in Verona, the Italian wine trade’s largest annual fair. It has also taken on a task previously performed by chambers of commerce, conducting checks to ensure that farmers and wine producers are following appellation laws. This involves inspecting vineyards and wineries, sometimes unannounced, and analytically and sensorially examining wines.
Since the dissolution of the Christian Democratic Party in 1994, waves of new parties, each bearing their own squad of politicians, have entered and left the national and Sicilian regional government within the span of a year or two. In this political climate, appointees such as Cartabellotta must be politically agile in order to survive. He has adroitly moved between Sicily’s Department of Agriculture and Forestry, the IRVV, and now IRVOS. With eloquence, enthusiasm, and boyish charm, he displays knowledge of Sicily’s complex history, culture, and wine industry. Sicilians rarely rally around one of their own. But Sicilian wine producers and technicians rally around Cartabellotta. Will he spark another great era, like the one that Diego Planeta brought to the Sicilian wine industry of the early 1990s?
THE MARKET SITUATION CIRCA 2010
The producers who attend Vinitaly want to show their wines to Italian and foreign buyers so they can maintain old business relationships and make new ones. Having a booth there is synonymous with being a player, though some smaller fairs that focus on specifics markets, such as the ones for organic wines, also attract a number of serious producers. There are many costs beyond those of having a booth, such as travel and lodging. Attendance at Vinitaly is expensive and therefore a useful indicator of the health of the Italian wine industry. Twenty-four Sicilian producers participated in the 1986 Vinitaly. By 1991 their number had swelled to fifty-three; by 2001, 102; and by 2009, 232. In 2010, for the first time, the number of Sicilian producers at Vinitaly dropped, to 180. Vinitaly 2011 had 168 Sicilian producers. At the 2012 fair, IRVOS listed 199 Sicilian exhibitors. Despite this improvement on paper over 2011, one end of the pavilion had some vacant areas.
The years 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 were difficult for the Sicilian wine industry. The word crisis peppered the conversations of many producers. From 1996 to 2000 the market was growing so rapidly that producers had little problem finding buyers for their wines. Then the increasing number of producers and their brands began to make the prospects for many new market entrants more difficult. Growth continued but slowed after the U.S. market plunged in March 2000 and after September 11, 2001. New York City restaurants are important showcases for Italian wines. The World Trade Center devastation had a chilling effect on restaurant dining in the city. Moreover, it led many Americans to immediately curtail overseas air travel. Soon after the attacks, the value of the euro increased, particularly against the U.S. dollar, making Italian wines more expensive to many countries outside the EU.
The Sicilian wine industry, however, continued to grow, but at a slower rate than before 2000. It was the banking crisis of September 2008 that made it regress. Consumer demand for high-cost Sicilian wines decreased. Overseas importers intensified their search for value and identified Sicilian producers’ ex-cellar prices as targets for hard-nosed haggling. Many reduced the number of producers they carried. From 1995 to 2008, many Sicilian wine producers secured loans from banks. The later that loans were secured during this period, the more difficult it was to make timely repayments. Start-ups that included new vineyard plantings were most at risk. In such cases, it usually takes at least seven years before income can be realized. Italian banks suddenly tightened their lending policies after September 2008 and, in an attempt to have more cash on hand, sought to restrict the credit that they had extended to wine producers or foreclose on related collateral. Sicilian wine producers’ principal response was to curtail investments. They