Siracusa DOC

Moscato from the territory of Syracuse, and by some accounts the oldest named wine in Italy. The denomination covers the commune alone, it makes almost nothing, and for a long stretch of the twentieth century it made nothing at all.

The Terroir The registered file attributes the link to the interaction of environmental peculiarities — a zone of plain and hill, the texture and structure of the soil, a warm temperate climate — with historical tradition from the Greek and Roman era to our own days, and with human factors: the varieties, the training forms and the traditional cultivation systems. The ground is the same white Hyblaean limestone that Syracuse is quarried from, and the sea is never more than a few kilometres away.

Pollio Siracusano The classical claim is unusually well attested. Ancient sources record a sweet Syracusan wine called Pollio, its introduction credited to Pollis, an Argive king of Syracuse in roughly the eighth century BC — which would make Moscato di Siracusa, if the thread holds, the earliest specifically named wine in the Italian record. Whether the modern grape descends from that one is unknowable. What is certain is that the reputation is very old and was continuously traded on.

Grape Varieties Moscato Bianco. The file describes a wine running from more or less intense golden yellow to amber, with a characteristic, fragrant, delicate Moscato nose. Three types are registered: the base Moscato, a passito, and an aromatic quality sparkling wine.

The Critical Take Siracusa DOC was granted in 1973 and then, remarkably, went out of production entirely — for decades not a single bottle was made under the name, and the denomination survived only on paper. Its revival from the late 1990s rests on a very small number of growers. The wine is worth the trouble: less overtly grapey than Moscato d’Asti and less heavy than Pantelleria, with orange blossom, apricot and a saline lift from the limestone. Nothing about it is commercially rational, which is rather the point.

Two Sicilian Moscati The island has two great sweet Muscat traditions and they could not be more different. Pantelleria works Zibibbo — Muscat of Alexandria — dried in the African wind on a volcanic island. Syracuse works Moscato Bianco on limestone by the Ionian, and the result is finer-boned, more floral and much rarer. Anyone who knows only the first should try the second.

At the Table Almond pastries, cassata, ricotta tarts, and the citrus of the Val di Noto; the passito also handles blue cheese and foie gras. Serve at 10–12°C.

Benchmark Producers Pupillo, whose estate at Targia revived the denomination and remains its reference.