Tag Archives: etna

Old Vines: Contrada Rampante, Sicily

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WWC21 Bray S - Etna lava

For JancisRobinson.com.

Etna is a fascinating place, at once feral and majestic, old and new. Large swaths of blackened, rocky earth scar its surface, reminders of the devastation that can come from an eruption. It is the highest active volcano in Europe, its magmatic activity the result of the meeting of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates far beneath the glimmering seas that surround the island of Sicily. The last eruption to reach Catania and the sea was in 1669, but she’s still quite active (yes, the locals refer to her in the feminine). Craters can form at any elevation, so when they burst like little pustules, rivers of lava can easily reach the small buildings and towns that ring its lower third. Driving along the Etna wine route from the town of Passopisciaro to neighboring Randazzo, one passes through the flow from 1981, still as starkly rugged as the day it first enveloped 200 hectares of land. Continue reading →

What Wine Means: Revisiting Passopisciaro 2007

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Sometimes a bottle of wine is like a much-needed hug.

In this case, that was due to both the maker and the giver. 2007 was the last vintage before Andrea Franchetti began making his single vineyard Contrada wines, so this was still his only Nerello Mascalese, and so much of that fruit still made it into this bottling. I’ve always thought of Passorosso (as this wine is now known) as his calling card, a holistic approach to representing a vision of Mt. Etna’s potential, encapsulating its myriad aspects, lava flows, and elevations in a glass. Revisiting this wine took me immediately back to a place for which I’ve been so nostalgic; tasting it, I was reminded of how the best wines of that place stand with the great wines of the world.

passorosso-2007

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Contrada Guardiola Comparative Tasting

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IMG_1993After a fantastic tour around Etna today with my friends at Tenuta delle Terre Nere, we wrapped with a tasting of wines from the Guardiola vines from both Terre Nere and Passopisciaro: Same alcohol, same vintage, different expressions of the same Contrada. Sitting across the road from one another, the terroir was evident – both share an amarena cherry nose, balsamic notes; bright acidity from this high altitude; and structure from this lava spill. Picked October 20th, the Terre Nere has more structured and drying tannins, leathery and peppery notes on the palate, while the Passopisciaro, picked November 2nd, showed sweeter fruit and more supple tannins, alongside more pronounced acidity. A tasting from two stars of Etna I’ve wanted to explore for awhile, and I thank my friends for obliging.

Passopisciaro, Passobianco 2014 – Mt. Etna, Italy

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IMG_9862My first harvest with Passopisciaro was for the whites on Mt. Etna in 2014, so I love revisiting this wine. We grow Chardonnay on volcanic soil between 820-1,000 meters (that’s 3,300 feet, folks) and go through the vineyards up to 20 times over the 2-3 week harvest period, through densely planted vines. It’s a fussy, even neurotic, approach to getting every bunch at its optimal moment of ripeness (read more here), but it makes for damn good wine. Texturally complex with its creaminess and minerality interacting, bright acidity, and at the moment singing with its rich fruit. It was perfect on yesterday’s first real spring day in New York.

A “Fussy” Harvest on Mt. Etna

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IMG_5889I spent my first few days in Italy down on Mt. Etna, observing the harvest at Passopisciaro. Andrea Franchetti, its owner, showed me how the color of the leaves and slope of the hills could allow him to predict what would be ready first – the vines with yellowed leaves were already bare, the sugars directed to the grapes on the areas where the soil wasn’t as rich (the deeper the green, the later the ripening goes his approach); and where there were depressions in the vineyard, however slight, those grapes too were still left to ripen, while the edges of the rows on higher ground were already plucked. We tasted from plant after plant, and for the first time I could really understand how much a single vine could vary from its neighbor. Some were just on the cusp of ripeness, with sweet juices bursting in my mouth and the seeds easily falling apart, where as others still maintained a tart, green edge.

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#inspirationtrip

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A few months ago, I took an amazing two-week trip through Sicily with my mother. We traveled from Rome to Agrigento, through Enna and Piazza Armerina, up to Mt. Etna, down to Ragusa, Modica and Donnalucata, and over to Noto and Siracusa. Driving through the island, we were amazed by the sheer diversity of this Maine-sized plot of land in the middle of the Middle Sea – from red sandstone temples high on the hillside of Agrigento to the southwest, to the white limestone walls lining the countryside of dusty Ragusa’s farmlands, to the Baroque gems of Noto and Siracusa in the southeast, and finally to the black lavic stone of the Catania region, with Mt. Etna looming above us.

Temple of Concordia, Agrigento

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Stay: Relais Monaci delle Terre Nere, Sicily

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It had been a long day in the car – my mother driving, me navigating, and my long-legged brother in the back seat trying not to get car sick – as we drove up from Agrigento in the southwest, through Enna and Piazza Armerina, home to the lovely and well-preserved Roman mosaics at the Villa Romana del Casale. With Mt. Etna’s peak long looming in the distance, we were happy to finally have arrive on the lower slopes of the volcano. Just past the tight, black stone-cobbled streets of Santa Venerina, we stumbled upon the road sign leading the way to our destination, the hotel Monaci delle Terre Nere. Monaci delle Terre Nere

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