Vulcanic soils, and their wines
Sipping on a glass of wine near a Volcano, metaphorically and also quite concretely. I went to Sicily and I started philosophising. This is what happens when you go to Magna Grecia.
This week, with my writer and sommelier friend
from we agreed to write about volcanic wines.As I am wandering through Sicily, and she hopped to the Canary Islands, we thought the theme could not be more appropriate. I took a hike in the Madoníe area in Western Sicily, hunting for indigenous botanical species together with some of the best botanists and herbalists in Italy.
In doing so, we came across several projects of biodiversity preservation.
I had the chance to visit the local manna producer and pastry shop Fiasconaro, and I will tell you about manna sometime in the future. Because another thing that I managed to see was the incredible variety of indigenous wine varietals present in Sicily. Similarly to the Vigna del Gallo of the Palermo Botanical Garden, which holds 95 vines of native vines, this is also an invaluable custodian of the incredible heritage of Sicilian viticulture.
Sicily is packed with initiatives like this, and in Catania, right on the Etna, you can find as well a beautiful 17th-century Palmento (winery) that is host to two 10,000-litre wooden barrels and an old wine press. The property, called Etna Urban Winery, has been reached and surrounded by the expanding city, now finding itself in a totally urban context.
Nowadays, it is the shrine of this rich anthropological and representative heritage of the historic Etna viticulture.
I find it really beautiful what Girolamo Russo, one of my favourite producers of the Etna area, says about winemaking in this specific terroir: “Making wine on Etna is an act of love, intimate and profound. And without end. Love for the places of our becoming adults. Love for a land that feeds and doesn't ask, that holds and doesn't leave and that makes everything that wants to stay grow. Sour land of lava that does not calm down, land of magma that drips and opens and faints and tired, seeks peace and becomes a monster of stone and landscape of the moon that carries the memory of fire inside.”
The wines are shaped intensely by their soils, characterised by the sciara (an Arabic word), which is the lava that cools and solidifies along the flow path.
The terroir is the king here, even more than in the famed Bourgogne.
Frank Corneliessen, another of my favourite producers, says that in his vineyards, “the new vines are planted without rootstock, using a selection of our original ungrafted plants. The sixth used is the sapling. Buckwheat is used to rebalance soil that is poor in organic material, especially when we prepare the land for planting a new vineyard, without resorting to industrial fertilizers. We avoid ploughing whenever possible, although this depends on the vintage and the amount of water during the winter (the recovery period for plants after the production cycle).”
“Today, a hectare of vineyards in the DOC area can cost 150,000 euros. Ten years ago the average price was 40 thousand. Today the ones that are most in demand are the north and north-east slopes of the DOC area: a real gold rush is underway” says Federico Lombardo di Monte Iato, in the Board of Directors of the Consortium for the Protection of DOC Etna for Repubblica.
With all this wine - and all those islands to discover, no wonder that this volcanic archipelago is such a wine bounty for us seekers. And moreover, it is packed with very interesting food to pair with its improbable wines. Like the amazing bacio pantesco, which is a dessert that carries a lot of resemblance with similar preparations all over the Iberian peninsula, and yet here in Sicily it is exquisitely specific: the two fried cakes are filled with ricotta, of course.
Still, wine does not only have a hedonistic, pleasurable facet.
Whilst everyone agrees on the need for safeguarding and preserving biodiversity and protecting the vineyards, there is much less consensus about what to do with their produce.
Or better, what to do with an increasingly controversial byproduct of the vineyards: fermented juice, aka wine.
There have been a lot of discussions lately all over Europe, about the alcoholic component of wine. It seems that last year, EU wine production grew by 4%, with consumption projections to be 7% lower than the average. And this happens in a time where, according to Open, winemakers have more wine than usual, but Europe is not thirsty. And neither are those who usually buy European wine, given that exports fell by 8.5% in the same period.
According to data from the Higher Institute of Health (ISS), an average of 48 people die every day in Italy from pathologies related to alcohol consumption, over 17,000 in a year.
The European Union has decided to give Ireland the green light for health alerts on alcohol labels. This decision, which will enter full force in 2026, was pushed by Ireland, where alcohol abuse is a very serious problem for people's health. It has caused a lot of controversial discussions especially in France, Spain and Italy, firmly opposed to a move that could equate the negative effects of alcohol with those of cigarettes in the eyes of the consumer.
But Minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry Francesco Lollobrigida (Fratelli d'Italia) minimised. Back in January, he said that "You don't have to resort to grandmothers' advice to know that a little wine can do you good, while excesses are always bad for any product. Even water, drunk in excessive quantities, can damage the body. And who would think of writing: “It seriously harms your health?”.
Research by the University of Pennsylvania, however, brings a more worrying aspect to the discussion: using a dataset of more than 36,000 adults revealed that going from one to two drinks a day was linked with changes in the brain equivalent to age two years. Heavier drinking was associated with an even greater toll.
Surely, wine is becoming an investment asset - perhaps we drink less, but we might buy more. Repubblica reports that wine investment is focusing on areas other than traditional Barolo and Brunello, and “it is also curious to discover the bottles of Italian territories traditionally less linked to the concept of fine wines, such as the Avellino area and Etna, which for us represent real bets for the future" says the only Master of Wine of Italy, Gabriele Gorelli and brand ambassador of Oeno Group for Italy”.
From September 2023, In Italy wine and oil will become subjects of study for hundreds of schools, from elementary to high school, thanks to an agreement between the government and the Italian Sommelier Association.
However, even a laudable initiative like teaching gastronomy to children is not consensual, not even in a traditionally wine-friendly country like Italy.
The wine will never be drunk in these initiatives aimed at children and teens because the students are largely minors. However, the doctors who deal with treating the effects of alcohol are alarmed: "We're crazy," exclaims Dr Gianni Testino, president of the Italian Alcohol Society to L’Espresso: "Alcohol increases the risk of cancer. A school that provides positive elements is anti-scientific and anti-ethical».
Ouch.
Of course, for a country that bases most of its production in agriculture on oil, wine and vegetables it is quite hard to let go of a tradition, the one of winemaking, that predates history and is rooted in very, very ancient memories.
So what we can do?
Well, we can keep driving good wines and exploring new wine regions that are up and coming, and find solace in the fact that luckily, we are not perpetual machines designed to live forever. Our mortality is here our gift, as we can drink, and die happy.
Giuseppe Verdi in La Traviata has his characters in choir sing:
“Libiamo, libiamo ne' lieti calici, che la bellezza infiora
E la fuggevol, fuggevol ora s'inebriì a voluttà
Libiam ne' dolci fremiti che suscita l'amore
Poichè quell'occhio al core onnipotente va
Libiamo, amore, amore fra i calici più caldi baci avrà
Ah! Libiam, amor fra' calici più caldi baci avrà"
And I think he is saying something wise and we could go along with it. In moderation, but without taking away our happiness - because there are incredible terroirs like these volcanic Sicilian ones just deserve to be sipped, loved, and discovered one bottle at a time.
This is the last “sister post” with my dear
- we take some leave and we will go back to writing about common topics here and on after summer.You can imagine both of us sipping on chilled rosé and giant sunglasses, busy writing, reading and living life aplenty.
Meanwhile, the regular posting will follow.
Qué bonito! Estas historias entre Cris & Sara me han recordado a las cepas de cordón trenzado de mi isla https://dovalleorotava.com/noticias-blog/155-historia-del-cordon-trenzado
Eat, drink and love (fondly). Buone vacanze. Bones vacances