The place#
Etna is the one wine region in Italy where the ground under the vines is younger than some of the vines. Sicily’s volcano stands about 3,350 metres above the Ionian Sea, the most active in Europe, and its vineyards form a horseshoe around the lower flanks between roughly 450 and 1,000 metres.
The north slope, where I base the tour, holds most of the names. Randazzo, at 754 metres, is the town, a medieval centre built in black lava stone with the summit at the end of every street. East of it the road runs through Passopisciaro and Solicchiata, two hamlets of Castiglione di Sicilia at about 650 metres, and the contrade follow one another along it: Calderara, Feudo di Mezzo, Guardiola, Arcurìa, with Barbabecchi above. Linguaglossa closes the north side.
The east slope faces the sea and takes the weather: Milo, at about 750 metres, is the wettest village on the mountain and the home of Carricante. The south-east, Viagrande, Trecastagni and Santa Venerina, is where Benanti has its house at the foot of Monte Serra.
Terroir: lava flows, altitude and a mountain climate#
Everything here comes back to the flows. A contrada, the local word for a named piece of land, usually sits on a single lava flow, and the soil is what that flow has become: black volcanic sand, lapilli, basalt broken down into the loose gravel growers call ripiddu. Two contrade a kilometre apart can differ more than two villages in Piedmont.
Altitude does the rest. The DOC runs from 450 to over 1,000 metres; the top parcels of Barbabecchi and Passopisciaro reach about 1,000, and I Vigneri’s Vigna Bosco at Bronte, Salvo Foti’s highest site, stands at 1,300, above the appellation. The climate is mountain and Mediterranean at once: hot days, cold nights, snow on the summit from November to April. Nerello Mascalese ripens in October and sometimes into November, one of the latest harvests in Italy.
The vines are the other half of the terroir. Old plantings are alberello, bush vines on a chestnut stake, at 8,000 to 12,000 per hectare on terraces walled with lava stone, and many are ungrafted: the volcanic sand has kept phylloxera out of the higher, older sites. Beside them stand the palmenti, stone houses where grapes were trodden and fermented in open lava vats.
Grapes and styles: Nerello Mascalese, Nerello Cappuccio, Carricante#
Nerello Mascalese is the red. Pale, high in acid, firm in tannin, it is compared to Nebbiolo and to Pinot Noir, and both comparisons are half right: Nebbiolo’s grip, Pinot’s colour, and a smoky, red-fruited, faintly bitter character of its own. Etna Rosso must be at least 80 percent Nerello Mascalese. The rest is usually Nerello Cappuccio, darker and softer, for colour and flesh; Benanti bottles it alone, which is rare.
Carricante is the white, and for me the more surprising of the two: searing acidity, salt, lemon and dried herbs, and a capacity to age for decades that few Italian whites can match. Etna Bianco Superiore may only come from Milo and must be at least 80 percent Carricante. Catarratto, Minnella and Grecanico fill out the old white field blends.
The styles follow the map. Single-contrada Etna Rosso from one flow is the region’s answer to a Burgundy village cru; the DOC recognised 133 contrade in September 2011, 142 after a 2022 survey, and every April the Contrade dell’Etna tasting, founded by Andrea Franchetti in 2008, lines them up. A natural wing ferments in buried terracotta and open stone alongside classic estates in steel and oak. I pour both; the argument between them is the subject of what I pour and why.
Producers to know#
Benanti at Viagrande is the classic reference. Giuseppe Benanti revived his family’s vines in 1988 and ran the Etna Project terroir study, with Salvo Foti as oenologist from 1988 to 2011; since the end of 2012 his twin sons Antonio and Salvino have run the estate. About 35 hectares on four slopes, steel for whites, oak for reds, Riservas held 60 months. Pietra Marina, an Etna Bianco Superiore from old Milo Carricante at about 950 metres, has been the Etna white to measure others against since 1988.
Frank Cornelissen at Solicchiata is the other pole. A Belgian former wine broker with no formal training, he arrived in 2001, bought small parcels of old alberello between 600 and 1,000 metres, and made his first vintage that year. About 24 hectares now, 13 of them old bush vines. No wood at all: epoxy-lined tanks and terracotta vessels buried to the neck in volcanic rock, cousins of the ones in qvevri, karas and amphora. Magma, from Barbabecchi at the top, is the grand vin; MunJebel and Susucaru are the ones to start with. Pale, wild, high-toned, saline.
Between the poles the north slope is full. Tenuta delle Terre Nere at Contrada Calderara, Randazzo, founded in 2002 by Marco de Grazia and his brother Iano, was the first to put a contrada name on an Etna label; its Prephylloxera bottling comes from ungrafted vines 100 to 140 years old. Passopisciaro, where Andrea Franchetti began in 2000, names its single-contrada wines by a single letter. Graci works out of a 19th-century palmento in Feudo di Mezzo with wild yeasts and large neutral oak. I Vigneri, Salvo Foti’s growers’ consortium named after the vine workers’ guild founded in Catania in 1435, ferments in the open lava vats of an 1840 palmento at Milo and works the alberello by hand and mule.
What a day here looks like on tour#
We sleep on the north side, in Randazzo or Linguaglossa, so the morning starts among the vines. First stop is a roadside contrada, Feudo di Mezzo or Calderara, on foot: black sand, chestnut stakes, a vine older than anyone present, the summit steaming above if the day is clear. Then a palmento, where I show how the mountain made wine before steel.
Late morning is a north-slope cellar with single-contrada wines side by side, same grape, same vintage, different flows. I pour and stay quiet. Lunch is in Linguaglossa or Randazzo: salsiccia al ceppo, the local sausage chopped on a stump, Etna porcini in season, pasta with Bronte pistachio, and a Carricante beside the Rosso to see what each does to the food.
The afternoon has two versions. One is the drive round to Viagrande for Benanti and Pietra Marina as the light goes. The other is Randazzo’s old town, or the road up to Piano Provenzana at 1,900 metres, well above the last vines. Dinner is granita and cannoli territory, and I keep one bottle from Solicchiata for the end of the table.
Practical#
Catania Fontanarossa is the airport, 75 kilometres and about 1 h 20 from Randazzo; from Taormina it is 50 kilometres and an hour. The north side is compact, the rest is not: Randazzo to Passopisciaro 10 kilometres, to Milo 45 kilometres and a full hour round the mountain, to Viagrande 55 kilometres and 1 h 15. The Italian drink-drive limit is 0.5 grams per litre, so we travel by minibus with a driver.
The best months are April to June, when the slopes are green and the Contrade dell’Etna tasting is held, and late September to November, when the Nerello comes in. Summer at 700 metres is mild; the coast below is not. From November to April there is snow above 1,500 metres.
Etna is the whole of my Etna volcanic wine tour, and pairs with the Langhe for Nebbiolo and Nerello in one trip; the rest of the country is in my Italy guide. If you would rather take the mountain at your own pace, or add the coast, a private tour can do it.
