Sicily (Sicilia)

Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean and behaves less like a region than a small country. It has a 3,350-metre active volcano, a desert-dry south coast, mountain ranges over 1,900 metres, and satellite islands closer to Africa than to Palermo. Nowhere else in Italy offers this much range inside one set of borders.

The Landscape Mountains cover 24 per cent of the island and plains only 14; the remaining 61 per cent is hill country, with plateaus running up to 800 metres. The Nebrodi and the Madonie form the northern spine — Pizzo Carbonara reaches 1,977 metres — and the Monti Erei sit at the centre, with Enna on top at around 930. The climate is Mediterranean along the coast and subtropical in places, but above 500 metres average temperatures fall away sharply, and it is that altitude, not the latitude, that makes fine wine possible here.

Two Plates and a Volcano Geologically Sicily belongs to the African plate, except for its north-eastern corner, which belongs to Eurasia: the Monti Peloritani are crystalline rock, the southernmost portion of the Calabrian-Peloritanian Arc. Between the two lies a transition zone, the Ibleo foreland, of Cretaceous reef limestone. And then there is Etna — basaltic, born in the Middle Pleistocene, erupting underwater at first and later into open air, now buried beneath its own recent lava and pyroclastics. Etna’s soils hold a particular clay called allophane with an unusual capacity to store water, and it is the reason vines survive long summer droughts on a mountain that receives almost no rain when it matters.

Greeks and Grapes Before the Greeks there were Sicans, Elymians and Siculians; an eruption of Etna is said to have pushed the Sicans west across the island. Greek settlement from the eighth century BC brought the vine into a culture that made it central: Naxos, among the first colonies, put a bunch of grapes on its coinage. Sicily has been a wine island for some 2,800 years, which is worth remembering whenever it is described as a new region.

The Grapes The whites are the deeper resource: Catarratto, still the most planted; Grillo, which built Marsala; Inzolia; Grecanico; Carricante, which on Etna makes one of Italy’s finest and longest-lived whites; Moscato Bianco and Zibibbo; and Malvasia di Lipari. Among the reds, Nero d’Avola — properly Calabrese — is the workhorse and can be superb when yields are held down; Frappato is pale, floral and best drunk cool; Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio are Etna’s reds, and Nerello Mascalese in particular behaves far more like Nebbiolo than like anything southern. Perricone and Nocera complete the list.

The Critical Take Sicily’s transformation is the most complete of any Italian region in the past forty years: from an island shipping anonymous blending wine north in bulk, to one producing some of the country’s most sought-after bottles. Etna drives that reputation and now carries its costs — land prices on the mountain have risen faster than quality has, and there are Etna Rossos trading on the address rather than the wine. The genuinely underexploited assets lie elsewhere: old bush-trained vines across the west, Carricante, and Cerasuolo di Vittoria, the island’s only DOCG and still absurdly good value. Marsala remains the great unsolved problem — a historically serious fortified wine wrecked by decades of cooking-grade production, with a handful of producers trying to prove it can be taken seriously again.

At the Table Pasta alla Norma, caponata, sarde a beccafico, swordfish and tuna from the Egadi, couscous in Trapani that arrived from North Africa and stayed, and ricotta in everything sweet. Frappato with tuna is one of the best red-wine-and-fish matches in Italy.

Where to Start Etna Bianco from Carricante, to disprove whatever you assume about southern whites. Then Cerasuolo di Vittoria, then an Etna Rosso from a grower with old vines on the north face.