Sicily: The Challenge of Turning Great Potential Into Great Wines

At about 25,700 square kilometers (17,100 miles), Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, a veritable country in its own right and blessed with ideal winemaking conditions, such as myriad exposures, altitudes, soils and grape varieties, plenty of sunlight and low rainfall. Not surprisingly, Sicily produces a lot of wine: about 12% of all Italian wine (including roughly 9% of Italy’s reds and 10% of Italy’s rosati). More precisely, the island accounts for roughly five million hectoliters of wine per year from what is Italy’s largest regional vineyard area—about 103,000 hectares, of which close to 90% are located in western Sicily. To put that in perspective, Sicily alone produces more wine than all of New Zealand or Greece.

Sicily boasts 24 different appellations; one of them, Cerasuolo di Vittoria, is a Denominazione d’Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG) while the other 23 are Denominazione d’Origine Controllata (DOC). Many of the latter are virtually unknown even to Italians (for example, Riesi, Sambuca di Sicilia, Sciacca) and a few may ring bells (Alcamo, Contea Sclafani, Contessa Entellina, Eloro, Faro), but only a handful are actually well known (Etna, Malvasia di Lipari, Marsala, Moscato di Noto, Moscato and Passito di Pantelleria). Encouragingly, the percentage of DOC and DOCG wines is increasing. Less than 5% in the mid-1980s, these wines now account for 18% of the island’s total wine production.

A view towards Etna and the sea from nearby vineyards

The Good and the Bad in Sicilian Wine 

There is much to like about Sicily’s wines. For example, prices are generally not high, even for famous, high-quality reds and exciting dry and sweet whites. The island is also home to many native grapes whose considerable quality potential has only recently become clear. It’s not surprising that the likes of Nero d’Avola and Nerello Mascalese have rightly gained fans the world over. Carricante, a white grape, is now rightly viewed as one of Italy’s three or four best native white varieties, capable of giving highly mineral and very ageworthy wines. Furthermore, the great potential of other cultivars such as the Catarrattos, Perricone and Grillo has not yet been fully tapped, so it is likely that there are many new and exciting wines to come from Sicily in the near future.

Moreover, a young generation of talented and passionate producers is bent on making quality wines—and not the plonk that was once routinely used as a blending agent for anemic reds made in more famous parts of Italy and other well-known wine-producing countries. And strangely enough, many different regional Sicilian governments also did fine jobs over the years in looking out for the island’s agriculture, for example by allocating considerable funding for the Istituto Regionale del Vino e dell’Olio (IRVO), although that situation may change, unfortunately. Long a model in scientific research, the institute has worked with some of Italy’s greatest wine minds (among others, Giacomo Tachis and Attilio Scienza) and it has helped in matters like developing new clones and identifying ideal production methodologies.

Etna has been the single most exciting development in Italian wine in the last decade, with Etna Rosso becoming Italy’s single hottest red wine. Unsurprisingly, the Etna DOC has grown at an impressive rate in recent years, reaching a production of 22,000 hectoliters of wine, and land under vine of roughly 650 hectares, compared to only 442 in 2007.

Other Sicilian wines have improved dramatically over the last decade. For example, an ever-increasing number of dedicated producers are now making truly outstanding Passito di Pantelleria and Malvasia di Lipari,  the latter wine is now being made on the island of Vulcano as well, which was not the case just a few years ago. And a good argument can be made that Nero d’Avolas have also never been better, especially now that the grape is being blended less and less frequently with international varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. In other words, Nero d’Avola is being allowed to shine like never before.