Experience Sicily

Tag: vino

  • Meet Me at the Enoteca

    An enoteca is a wine shop, where one samples wine that is served with the intention that you’ll purchase a few bottles. Often light snacks are served with the wine. This enoteca pictured is at Planeta’s Ulmo winery in Sambuca di Sicilia. Cin Cin!

  • Wine Making: Old and New

    The old-fashioned way (using foot stomping and a wicker wheel), on the left, and the modern way (stainless steel equipment), on the right, to macerate wine grapes.

  • Grape Spotting

    Depending on the region of the island (Sicily has many microclimates.), the grape harvest has started. These Nerello Mascalese grapes, indigenous to Etna, are not yet ready, but the wine maker is measuring the grapes’ vitals every day to strike when the moment is right.

  • Wine Can Transport You

    I brought this Etna Rosso back from Sicily in July, after staying at the vineyard where it was produced. In addition, Experience Sicily’s Evelina Buttitta has been staying at the property’s agriturismo in Linguaglossa on Etna the past two nights with friends. So, it was wondrous that I was able to bring Scilio Wines’ Orphéus…

  • Sunset Pairing

    Today, during our private family heritage tour, it was a day of food and wine. A hands-on cooking class in the morning, then a winery tour and tasting with dinner pairing this evening. The wines were so varied and complex… A straight Nero d’Avola that was smokey with cherry overtones; a fruity Grillo, and a…

  • Sip and Savor 

    Slowly savor Sicilian wines during your first evening in Sicily with a wine tasting and dinner pairing … Experience it on September 23 … Contact me at AllisonScola@ExperienceSicily.com for the full, 8-day, small-group, multi-sensory tour itinerary. 

  • Drink Sicily 

    Experience Sicily’s Evelina Buttitta and her husband toured Abbazia Santa Anastasia cantina in the Madonie Mountains today. She said it was, “Bellissimo.” Sicily has a robust wine production industry. For your visit to the region, we can organize tastings and tours of vineyards throughout the island, so you can “drink Sicily” too! 

  • Saint Martin in Noto

    Each province of Sicily celebrates San Martino a bit differently. In Noto, they eat both sweet and savory crispelle, such as the ones pictured, photographed by Niki Masino of GelsominoImports.com, along with cooked wine.

  • These Barrels Have a Nose 

    November 11 is La Festa di San Martino, or Saint Martin’s Day. It marks the first tasting of the new wine, also known as “novello.” September marked the grape harvest, when the grapes are picked, cleaned, and macerated (Yes, it’s true, wine makers used to stomp on them with their feet…) to make juice that…