French farmers had been replanting with vines grafted onto American rootstocks. The volume of wine produced by the French harvest had rebounded by 1885. In 1888, the Italo-France Treaty of Commerce of 1881, which had lowered barriers to trade between the two countries, expired. Not only had the French vineyards been restored, but the political relationship between Italy and France had soured, due to Italy's increasingly close ties with Germany, which remained a rival to France after having humiliated it during the Franco-Prussian war. Protectionist measures such as tariffs took the place of the treaty, and French merchants left Sicily—without having made significant contributions to its wine industry, unlike the British. A British consular report of 1888 describes the crisis at the port of Palermo: “There was also a great falling-off in French ships, due to the enormous increase in tonnage dues on French vessels imposed during 1887. Only 13 vessels, of 17,925 tons, arrived, against 108 of 130,773 tons in 1886.”8 The British consular report of 1889 describes the consequences in Sicily: “The failure to renew the treaty of commerce between Italy and France has had most disastrous effects upon the wine trade, and prices have fallen greatly . . . to 50%, nearly.”9
As of 1887, the Catania wine trade, which exported mostly from the port of Riposto, felt the greatest impact from the loss of French trade. In response, Riposto merchants looked for British and U.S. buyers. While the dark, coarse vino da taglio wines might have suited the needs of French merchants, they did not suit British and American merchants, who required finished dry wines with a lower alcohol content. The British vice-consul at the time described the Sicilian export wines as “green,” “shipped . . . in badly coopered casks of chestnut,” and as a result not likely to be sold abroad.10 The British understood that “defective final preparation” was the reason that Sicilian producers were not finding export markets for their red wines, given that “the French for many years have been enabled to introduce them into the world's markets after due manipulation at Cette and Bordeaux.”11
The absence of French traders, however, was not Sicily's only challenge. Phylloxera invaded the island in 1880 at Riesi. By 1885, provinces throughout Sicily were reporting infestations. Given the poor demand for Sicilian wine, it made no sense to replant the devastated vineyards, particularly the ones on slopes that were more difficult and more costly to work. Though the economic forecast for its wine industry was not good, the Italian government supported Sicily's efforts to halt the progress of the infestation and to provide phylloxera-resistant rootstocks developed in Sicily, at first free of charge and later at growers’ cost. Sicily's success in combating its phylloxera infestation was founded on its historic strength: agriculture. By 1889 the British vice-consul was also reporting improvements in Sicilian vinification practices. Some producers were beginning to show “a greater care and cleanliness, and their wine has been of a better quality.”12 Perhaps the loss of the French market had forced some Sicilian producers to improve their wine. At the same time, among a small group of wealthy entrepreneurs and nobility, an interest in making fine wine developed.
PROTO-MODERN QUALITY WINES EMERGE
In the wake of the collapse of the French bulk wine market, a small but significant quality wine industry developed in Sicily during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. The British consul William Stigand's report of 1889 to the British Parliament noted, “The most enterprising of Sicilian wine growers having already taken part in the exhibitions of Italian wines at Rome, Bologna, and other Italian towns with considerable success, and also gained distinction by medals and diplomas at the Italian Exhibition in London, at length determined to hold exhibitions of their own.”13 There seemed to be a strong spark in 1889, when the first Grand Sicilian Fair and Enological Exposition was held in Palermo and the Circolo Enofilio Siciliano ("Circle of Sicilian Oenophiles") met for the first time, also at Palermo.
Edoardo Alliata, the duke of Salaparuta, had taken over the production of Corvo on the death of his father, Giuseppe, in 1844. Under his direction, Corvo went from the low-volume production of a family estate to a high-volume commercial product. During several visits to France and Tuscany, Alliata realized that he had to modernize the way Corvo was made. He constructed the first wine production facility at Casteldaccia, near the Corvo contrada. He sought the advice of his brother Fabrizio, who lived in Paris, and of Louis Oudart, the French enologist of Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, a Piedmont politician who in 1861 became the first prime minister of Italy. Alliata hired the French technician Giovanni Lagarde and bought new French presses, whose design made Corvo white wine delicate and fresh tasting. It was a great contrast to the ambertinted, high-alcohol, coarse-textured white wines typical of Sicily. After the unification of Italy in 1860, fifty thousand bottles of Corvo, half of the annual production, were sold in Sicily and the other half on the Italian mainland. By 1876, Corvo white and red were being exported to America and northern Europe. Some bottles even reached Australia. The wines won numerous awards at competitions and fairs around the world, medaling in Paris in 1878, Melbourne in 1881, and Bordeaux in 1882. Corvo white, according to the British consul Stigand, was held in higher esteem than the red. He likened it to a “white Burgundy, though heavier in the palate than Chablis.” The red Corvo was “pure” and “like a strong Burgundy” “but does not keep very well.”14 Stigand also compared Corvo sweet wine to Sauternes. In 1889, Alliata became the first president of the Circolo Enofilio Siciliano.
Some forty-eight kilometers (thirty miles) southeast of Palermo at Montemaggiore, Prince Baucina planted vine cuttings from the famous Rheingau wine town of Johannisberg in the vineyards on his property, La Contessa. These faced northeast, north, and northwest at 550 meters (1,804 feet) above sea level on the slopes of a mountain. The exposition and high elevation guaranteed temperatures that, though warmer than those of the Rheingau, would have been suitable for these vine varieties (which should have included Riesling, although there is no specific mention of it). According to Stigand, La Contessa's clayey soil resembled that of Johannisberg.15 The king of Italy had the emperor of Germany sample La Contessa's wine, though there are no records of his comments. Baucina fermented his wine in cask rather than in vat and let it mature in cask for three and a half years, with many rackings. It was reputed to be light and delicate. He sold his wine in fluted bottles in twelve-bottle cases from stores in Palermo, Rome, and Naples.
For about twenty years bracketing the turn of the twentieth century, the Tasca family bottled a wine named after their villa, Camastra, at the southwest edge of the Conca d'Oro, the semicircular plain that encompasses Palermo. The white Camastra was principally a Catarratto and Inzolia blend. Perricone, Nerello Mascalese, and Nero d'Avola dominated the red Camastra. These wines won awards such as a Medal of Honor at the Syracuse Exposition of 1871 and were sold in Europe and America.
About fifteen miles west of Palermo, Duc d'Aumale produced a wine called Zucco. He was a Frenchman, Henri d'Orleans, who came to Sicily in 1853 and acquired the six thousand hectare (14,826 acre) Lo Zucco estate four miles south of the village of Terrasini. He brought cuttings from Spain, the Rheingau, and Bordeaux, planted native varieties such as Perricone and Catarratto, and employed French technicians, including a viticulturist and an enologist. He began planting vineyards in 1860. As of 1889 he had reached about two hundred hectares (about five hundred acres) and was employing some five hundred to six hundred workers. He made at least two white wines, one called Moscato Zucco or Lo Zucco, which was very aromatic and sweet, with 15 to 18 percent alcohol, and Lo Zucco Secco, made with the Catarratto grape variety and much like a Marsala: dry and amber colored, with 16 to 17 percent alcohol. He also made red wines, but these were less highly esteemed. The British consul Stigand said the sweet white Zucco was more similar to Sauternes than to Sherry or Marsala.16 It was in such demand in France that it was not available in Palermo. In 2011 a Palermo wine company, Cusumano, released a Moscato dello Zucco inspired by d'Aumale's sweet white. Cusumano's first vintage of this wine was the 2007. Though Cusumano uses Moscato Bianco, as the Moscato dello Zucco brand registered by the Istituto Regionale della Vite e del Vino (IRVV) requires, the historical Moscato Zucco used raisined Moscato Giallo.17
Stigand also reported
