U.S. market, Regaleali was the first to put Sicily on a label, proudly. The synergy between the Tasca family, Miceli, and the Palermo-born Leonardo LoCascio, the founder of the U.S. importer Winebow, helped shine a positive light on the image of Sicily and its wines.
DONNAFUGATA: SICILIAN STYLE
Donnafugata would not exist but for the entrepreneurial genius of Giacomo Rallo, whose business intuition was apparent when he made the difficult decision to leave his family’s traditional Marsala business in order to embrace the new market for quality wine. In a subtler way, the same statement could be made about his able partner and wife, Gabriella Anca Rallo. She was the force behind early viticultural renovations at her family’s Contessa Entellina estate. This farm is the source of most of Donnafugata’s grapes. Soon after Tachis’s arrival in Sicily as a consultant to the IRVV, the Rallos hired him to consult directly for Donnafugata, which he did until 2000. Like the Tascas and the Planetas, the Rallos carefully groomed their family members to take key roles at Donnafugata. Daughter Josè and son Antonio joined the business in 1990. While Antonio is in charge of production, Josè focuses on marketing and public relations. Donnafugata buys in about 40 percent of its grape needs, a larger share than either Tasca or Planeta buys in. Its brands by image and flavor are less linked to specific terroirs. Donnafugata front labels rarely mention the identities of grape varieties. While its wines are technically excellent, the company has the edge on its friendly rivals Tasca d’Almerita and Planeta in its creative, style-driven marketing, which expresses a confident, fanciful, and jubilant Sicilianness.
“INVADERS” FROM THE NORTH
In the late 1990s three wine investors from northern Italy arrived in Sicily and gave momentum to a wave of investment from the boot of Italy. Most significant was the arrival of Gianni Zonin. The family-run Zonin winery has more acreage of vineyards than any other family-run winery in Italy. It bought a large estate, Feudo Principi di Butera, in the province of Caltanissetta in 1997. Also in that year, Paolo Marzotto from Vicenza in the Veneto bought Baglio di Pianetto in the hills south of Palermo. A year later he invested in a sizable vineyard in the Noto area in southeast Sicily. In 2003, when his state-of-the-art winery at Baglio di Pianetto became operational, he stepped down as the chair of his family’s Santa Margherita winery group in the Veneto. In 1998, Vito Catania, a successful businessman from Milan but Sicilian by ancestry, came to the Vittoria area to start the Gulfi winery.
Italian wine producers were becoming aware of Sicily’s potential. It could produce ready-to-drink red wines in styles that would appeal to wine critics and the public. Furthermore, these wines could be made at a low enough cost and great enough volume to compete with the onslaught of New World wines on the world market. The feeling in the air was invest or be left behind. In 1999, Gruppo Italiano Vini (GIV), the largest wine company in Italy, entered into a joint venture with the de la Gatinais family of Rapitalà. The Gruppo Cooperativo Mezzacorona, a large cooperative from Trento, created the wine estate Feudo Arancio in 2001 by buying extensive vineyards and building a winery in Sambuca di Sicilia near Menfi. In 2002 the sparkling wine specialist Fratelli Gancia from Piedmont gave birth to the Capocroce brand after buying land and planting vineyards at Borgata Castellazzo in the township of Trapani. Two Tuscan producers with high-quality profiles made smaller targeted investments. Antonio Moretti, an entrepreneur and the owner of the Tuscan estate La Tenuta Sette Ponti, bought vineyards and started the Maccari winery in 2000 in the Noto area. Closer to the city of Noto, in 2003 Filippo Mazzei of Fonterutoli in Tuscany purchased a baglio in the contrada of Zisola, giving that name to the new wine estate. After 2000, most of the new investment interest moved to the Etna area and was on a much smaller scale. Andrea Franchetti from Rome began the Passopisciaro winery on Etna in 2000. The Florentine Marco de Grazia founded Tenuta delle Terre Nere in 2003. Roberto Silva and Silvia Maestrelli from Milan and Federico Curtaz from Valle d’Aosta created Fessina in 2007. Beyond these investments in the Etna area, there have been few from outside Sicily since the early 2000s.
VARIETAL CHOICES OF THE 1990S
During the late 1980s and the 1990s, interest in red wines grew, and there was a marked increase in the number available on the international market. A prestige category developed. Wines in this category competed on the world stage of public opinion. Usually that stage was the pages of magazines printed in Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, and other countries with sizable wine markets. Such international publications favorably reviewed red wines that smelled of toasted new oak and were deep in color, alcoholic, and soft textured. Following Tachis’s prescriptions, Sicilian winemakers produced red varietal wines using well-known international varieties or blends of Nero d’Avola with those varieties.
No Sicilian red variety besides Nero d’Avola has risen to international market acceptance. Though Nerello Mascalese–dominant red wines are gaining attention, the reputation of the variety remains in the shadow of Etna and its appellation. Syrah is plentiful in Sicily, but it has not been associated with Sicilian wine. The images of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot were stronger in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Now the popularity of these two varieties is on the wane. Frappato is gaining recognition, but too little is planted for it to become popular on the international market.
No one indigenous white variety became the calling card for Sicily. Inzolia, Catarratto, Grillo, Grecanico, and Chardonnay varietal wines and blends vied in the marketplace. Sicilian producers planted Chardonnay nearly everywhere on the island from 1985 to 2000. With the exception of only the hottest of climates, where the skins were subject to burning, Chardonnay made wines that combined richness on the mouth with moderate acidity. At the prestige level, barrel-fermented Chardonnay became the means by which Sicilian producers distinguished themselves on the Italian and international stages. By 2005 the focus on Chardonnay, particularly barrel-fermented Chardonnay, had begun to wane as tastes moved to other varieties and unoaked wine. Sweet wines, such as Moscato di Pantelleria and Malvasia di Lipari, a category in which Sicily had historically excelled, remain niche products.
THE RISE OF SICILIA IGT
An Italian wine law passed in 1992, Law 164, among its many provisions created the IGT (indicazione geografica tipica) category of wines. Higher legal yield limits and the possibility of sourcing grapes or wines from large areas enabled wines labeled IGT to cost less than those labeled DOC. IGT wines could be vintage dated and display a variety name as long as that variety was allowed by IGT regulations and constituted at least 85 percent of the blend. A Sicily-wide IGT, Sicilia IGT, was created in 1995. By the end of the 1990s, Sicilia IGT wines, many featuring Nero d’Avola, increasingly dominated the sold-by-the-bottle market. As of 2008 more than 25 percent of all Sicilian wine, bulk and otherwise, was bottled at the IGT level, and Sicilia IGT was and remains by far the largest category of Sicilian bottled wine. In fact, in most instances, Sicilian producers who could register and label their wines as DOC prefer to use the Sicilia IGT category instead because it gives them more flexibility in all aspects of production. Existing regulations allow the bottling of Sicilia IGT wines on the mainland of Italy. Northern Italian merchants have become the principal bottlers of Sicilian wine, much to the irritation of Sicilian producers.
SICILIA DOC
As of October 2011, Italy’s national commission that assesses proposals for legal wine designations (under the auspices of the Ministry of Agricultural and Forestry Affairs) has approved a new islandwide Sicilia DOC. Large Sicilian wineries have championed this development. They assert that the rock-bottom prices and low quality of Sicilia IGT wines, particularly those bottled on the mainland, are degrading the image of Sicilian wine. Only 20 percent of Sicilian wine production is bottled on Sicily. A lot of wine leaving the island in bulk ends up being bottled and sold by mainland bottlers under the Sicilia IGT designation. No one seems to know exactly how much. Sicilians suspect that mainland bottlers not only use illegal blending to construct their Sicilia IGT wines but also illegally blend Sicilian wine into their other Italian appellation wines. The fact that mainland producers are making money by selling Sicilian wine awakens the mistrust of Sicilians, who feel that over the millennia outsiders have misused the island’s
