Sicilian Wines

We recently made a trip to Sicily and tasted some excellent wines and food to go with it. The wines were so good and I tucked into the wine and food so enthusiastically that I forgot to take notes; so now I am operating from memory.

But why are Sicilian wines so good? It is the usual story - soil, sunshine, rain at the right times and agricultural and techniques. Culture, history and tradition should also be added into the equation. All of this is reflected in the wine.

Wine making was brought to the island over 2,000 years ago with the Greeks the culture of wine making progressed with the Romans up until modern times. This combined with the Sicilians love of good has lead to a tradition for making wines which matches the local cuisine. The wines therefore show regional and local character. One of Sicily's most famous dessert wines, Marsala, is one of the ingredients of my favourite desserts - Zabaglione. I did not get round to tasting the wine directly on this trip but never mind.

We stayed in Ortigia a small island off the mainland at Syracuse and from our apartment window we could see the the bay where Archimedes was supposed to have helped with the defeat of the Atheian navy. Ortigia and Syracuse are famous for their Greek and Roman ruins and both towns exude history.

Upon our arrival what better place to go with our Australian friends than Solaria or the "Anarchists" wine bar right in the centre of Ortigia. This wine bar has a huge range of Italian and Sicilian wines for sale including some of the top names at top prices - Tenuta San Guido - Sassicaia, Antinori etc. But who needs to drink the top names for the local red wine was great for starters with "tapas" or "cichetti"? I could have stayed all night in this bar and spent a lot of money - they even had some of my favourite burgundies but why go to Italy to drink french wine , I get enough of that at home. Next down to a seafood restaurant and some great seafood pasta and a carafe of the local white, this was quite an introduction to the local food and wine.

No Easter Sunday can be complete without going out for lunch which our friends arranged at the at Hotel des Etrangers et Miramare which overlooks the marina: we sat on the roof garden. The Hotel offered a great menu of food complete with specially selected wines from the locality and at Eur 50 per head all included was excellent value for money:

Raw Artichokes with baked ricotta, cream and thyme en croûte.
Mezze maniche pasta with cauliflower and pancetta on a Piacentino
Ennese cheese fondue.
Loin of Lamb encrusted in pistachio past with cherry tomato jam.
Easter Cassata.

Piacentino Ennese is ewes milk cheese infused with saffron and black peppercorns but it is not spicy tasting but it is excellent. This was a finely designed menu and suited the occasion admirably and what better than to sample the local wines with it. For starters we drank Fania Isolia Fiano dry white wine which had floral overtones and it was excellent with the first two courses. With the main course we drank Fanus Syrah –Nero D’Avola red wine which had a concentrated flavour of red fruits and plums and had the tannin structure to go well with the rich flavoured lamb course. For dessert we drank we drank Jaraya Il Passito a honeyed flavoured rich sweet wine which complimented the dessert perfectly and which was my favourite wine. All of these wines were produced locally by Cantine Gulino. The soil in the region is based on both limestone and volcanic rocks and I feel that it produce wines which are less rich than the more fertile soils of the Etna region. These wines were an excellent introduction to Sicilian wine tasting and they are available in the rest of Europe at reasonable prices. The Nero d’Avola grape may be better known to drinkers of Corvo wine.
The menu was perfectly designed to go with the wines but my wife claimed that more vegetables were needed whilst averring that in France vegetables were always served with lamb. Our French waiter diplomatically declined to ask the kitchen to prepare us some vegetables to supplement the perfect menu. This is one solecism that a “Brit” abroad would never commit; imagine the embarrassment of asking for meat and two vegetables.
The market in Ortigia is a delight even if it would be shut down in London on hygiene grounds –whatever next the merchants were smoking over their stalls. There was a fantastic range of live snails and shell fish. The Sicilian cheeses were marvellous and the fish and poultry were fresh. What better way to have a light lunch than to eat some local ham and cheese supplemented by a tomato salad and fresh bread with an olive oil and lemon juice seasoning all washed down with a bottle of 2008 Etna Rosso red wine from Firriato. This wine was Eur 10 from a local shop and was one step up in quality from the local wines it is made from Nerello Mascalese-Nerello Cappuccio grapes. This wine tasted of red fruits with a hint of spice this wine has a well integrated and tannic structure which indicates that it will keep well for a long time and improve in the bottle. At this price it was exceptional value for money but I don’t doubt that you will have to pay much more outside of Italy. It held its own well with tomato salad and the strong cheeses.

This is “what we did on our holidays “ eating and drinking paradise.
Wherever we ate and drank in Ortigia and Syracuse we got excellent value for money even the local cafes far away from tourists served excellent food and local wine.

No trip can be made to Sicily without going up Mount Etna so we hired a car with our Australian friends. The island of Sicily is quite poor and the buildings are mostly run down and shabby and some parts of Syracuse are filthy this unfortunately gives it a third world feeling and I approached driving with a little trepidation. The driving standards on the island are appalling. There seem to be no rules obeyed at roundabouts, you have to look both ways when passing a green light at cross roads and absolute vigilance is required when overtaking on the Autostrada as many motorists are cruising at tens of kpm above the 130 speed limit and no-one seems to slow down for road works. They are probably rushing to get to the restaurant or home for some really good food and wine. After a while you get used to it and as Sicily is such a crowded isle and all of its 5 million citizens are concentrated on the coastal strip the roads are exceptionally crowded so the traffic is going very slow just like in Bombay and the chaos does seem to be quite as dangerous in town as on the dual carriageway.
After a bracing walk on Mount Etna we made our way down to Catania via Albergo Del Bosco on the lower slopes of Etna and there we found the Hotel Emmaus who willingly served us lunch at 2 30 pm just as they were about to shut the restaurant. We had a four course meal with wine for Eur 20 washed down with some house wine from the locality. The local red went exceptionally with the best pasta with wild mushroom sauce that I have ever tasted. The Hotel is a religious retreat but that did not get in the way of them serving excellent food and wine.

We spent our last night in the Ortigia in Solari where we drank the best wine of our trip Etna Rosso 2008 Murgo Semper, this wine is a star similar in style to the Firriato and is produced from the same grapes. It is , however, of much higher quality and complexity and it has the structure to last a very long time.

This was the best way to end a delightful gastromnomic and wine tasting holiday. Sicily, I can thoroughly recommend it; great wine great food and above all lovely people.