Sicilian Wine Beyond Etna: Nero d'Avola, Frappato, Marsala

Sicily is now known abroad for Etna, whose wines are pale, high and mineral and have spent fifteen years being compared to Burgundy. The rest of the island makes something else entirely, and it is what most Americans have actually drunk: Nero d'Avola, the dark red of the southeast, and the whites and fortified wines that came before anyone thought of the volcano as a wine region.

Nero d'Avola

Nero d'Avola is the most planted red grape in Sicily and takes its name from Avola, a town on the southeastern coast below Syracuse. It is a warm-climate grape: dark, full bodied, with black fruit, and in ripe years a sweetness of fruit that can carry high alcohol.

Is it the same as Pinot Noir? No, and it is close to the opposite. Pinot Noir is pale, light, delicate and hard to grow. Nero d'Avola is dark, sturdy and generous, and it survives heat that would ruin a Burgundian grape. The confusion comes from importers who have compared the two on the basis that both are dry reds.

Is it any good? It depends entirely on yield and place. Industrial Nero d'Avola from high-yielding vineyards is the wine that fills supermarket shelves at seven dollars, and it tastes like it. Grown well in the southeast, particularly around Noto and Pachino, and picked before it over-ripens, it is a serious wine with the structure to age ten years.

Is it expensive? Rarely, which is the argument for it. The good bottles sit in a price band where Tuscany and Piedmont offer very little.

At the table it goes with what it grows next to: grilled meat, caponata, aged cheeses, pasta with sardines, anything with tomato and oregano in it.

Frappato, and Sicily's only DOCG

Twenty kilometers inland from the coast, around Vittoria in the province of Ragusa, is the one place on the island with the top Italian denomination.

Cerasuolo di Vittoria became a DOC in 1973 and Sicily's only DOCG in 2005. It is a blend: 50 to 70 percent Nero d'Avola, the rest Frappato, a local grape that is everything Nero d'Avola is not. Frappato is pale, light, floral, strawberry-scented, low in tannin and best served slightly cool. The blend lands somewhere in the middle, and it is the most drinkable serious red in Sicily, particularly in summer.

Frappato on its own, unblended, has become the fashionable Sicilian red among American sommeliers, and it is grown on the red sand plains behind Vittoria, in the Hyblaean country our journeys spend a day in.

The whites

Grillo is the island's best known white grape, originally grown for Marsala and now made dry: citrus, salt, herbs, good with fish.

Catarratto is the most planted white in Sicily and long went into bulk wine and vermouth. Taken seriously, it makes a broader, waxier white.

Inzolia, also called Ansonica, is soft and almondy, and it also feeds Marsala.

Carricante belongs to Etna, where altitude and volcanic soil give it an acidity nothing else on the island has. Our guide to Etna wine covers that side of the story, including Nerello Mascalese and the contrade.

Marsala, and what happened to it

In 1773 an English merchant, John Woodhouse, found a local fortified wine in the town of Marsala, on the western tip of Sicily, and shipped it to England with extra brandy added to survive the voyage. It became a British success, then a Sicilian industry, and then, in the twentieth century, a cooking ingredient. Sweetened and industrialized, it lost its reputation.

Marsala got its DOC in 1969. The dry styles, aged for years in barrel and labeled vergine or superiore, are a serious fortified wine in the family of sherry and madeira, and they are startlingly cheap for what they are. If you have only met Marsala in a pan with chicken, a glass of a ten year old dry one is a different drink.

Passito di Pantelleria, and a UNESCO vineyard

Pantelleria is a volcanic island closer to Tunisia than to Sicily, where the wind is strong enough that the vines are grown in hollows, each plant trained low in a bowl of scooped earth. The grape is Zibibbo, which is Muscat of Alexandria, and the wine that made the island's name is Passito di Pantelleria, made from grapes dried in the sun: apricot, honey, orange peel, and enough acidity to stop it cloying.

In November 2014 UNESCO inscribed the vite ad alberello of Pantelleria, the bush vine cultivation practiced there, on the list of intangible cultural heritage. What is protected is not a landscape but a way of working: the vines are pruned low and the grapes are picked crouching, by hand, in the wind.

How to read a Sicilian label

Four things tell you most of what you need.

The denomination. DOCG is the top tier and in Sicily means one wine, Cerasuolo di Vittoria. DOC covers the rest of the named zones, including Etna, Marsala, Noto and the island-wide Sicilia DOC. IGT Terre Siciliane is the broader category, and it includes both cheap industrial wine and serious bottles from producers who choose to work outside the rules.

The grape, when it is on the label. Sicilian wines are often named after the grape rather than the place, which makes them easier to buy than a Barolo.

The alcohol. In a hot climate this is a proxy for style: a Nero d'Avola at 15.5 percent will be jammy and sweet-fruited, one at 13 will be fresher and probably picked earlier.

The place, if it is small. A wine from a named contrada or a small comune is usually made in smaller volumes than one labeled for the whole island.

Tasting it without a car

Wine touring in Sicily is harder than in Tuscany: the estates are far apart, many require a booking, and the ones worth the drive are usually at the end of a farm track. If you are not driving, the practical routes are an organized excursion, a driver for the day, or drinking well in a town and asking the person pouring.

Our journeys take the second approach: the Amber and Jasmine routes both include a day on Etna built around the volcano and its wine, with the driving handled and a table at the end of it.

Taking bottles home

United States Customs and Border Protection points travelers to the law of the state where they land: how much alcohol you may bring in, and whether you need a permit, is set by that state, not by a single federal allowance. Check the state's alcoholic beverage control board before you plan on a case rather than a bottle.

Practically: wine travels best in a checked bag, in a purpose-made sleeve or inside clothes, and the bottles worth carrying are the ones you cannot buy at home. For Sicily that means a dry Marsala, a serious Frappato, or a passito, rather than a supermarket Nero d'Avola that is exported everywhere.

Drinking it where it is made

A day in a vineyard, with the person who owns it, is one of the experiences our journeys are built from, and the food on the table comes from the same few kilometers. If you want a trip organized around wine rather than one that includes it, say so in Design your trip.