Another year has come and gone and boy does time fly. I appreciate all the support and recognition from my readers since my beginnings of Vino Travels in 2013. I'd love to hear from more of my readers around the world so drop me an email to say hello or leave a comment. It's always exciting to me to see subscribers from around the world and I hope you have enjoyed your weekly newsletter. I'm always looking to improve and will have some changes to my site hopefully this year that I'm working on as well. Can't wait to share it with you. Have a great happy and healthy start to New Year! Below I'm sharing my most popular top 10 Italian wine blogs of 2015. Enjoy a recap! #1 - Italian Food, Wine & Travel (#ItalianFWT) Explores Abruzzo #2 - Vernaccia di Serrapetrona: A 3 Fermentation Wine #3 - Comprehensive Guide to Sagrantino & Montefalco #4 - Donna Laura Ali, The Sangiovese of Angels
We're about a quarter of the way
touring our way around Italy with our Italian Food, Wine & Travel
bloggers group. Last month we featured the Trentino-Alto
Adige and this month we're hopping on a jet down to the complete
opposite end of the country to the island of Sicily. Today I wanted
to share with you a unique grape of Sicily that can be found in many
of the wines produced in this region including the famous Marsala
wines of western Sicily. The grape is known as insolia, also known
as inzolia or ansonica. It's a dry white wine that you will find
either alone or blended with other grapes.
Cusumano winery ~ Compliments of www.cusumano.it
Unfortunately I've been pretty sick
this week catching the flu from my wonderful husband. I guess I
can't say he never gave me anything ; ) The wine I wanted to share
with you today thankfully I tasted prior to this week or my taste
buds would've been pretty non-existent and I won't share with you
wines that I don't enjoy. The wine today comes from the Cusumano
winery, which began in 2001 and is operated by brothers Diego and
Alberto. Their winery has 7 different vineyard sites where they grow
their grapes to produce a variety of wines on about 1250 acres (500
hectacres). Their 2012 Cusumano Angimbe Sicilia IGT wine is made of
70% Inzolia and 30% Chardonnay. These particular Inzolia grapes are
grown in the Piana degli Albanesi, which resides in the province of
Palermo. For those of you that go by ratings, this wine was rated 90
points by James Suckling. this wine had golden color with floral aromas of golden apple and lemon zest. Medium-bodied and smooth on the palate. Nicely balanced. SRP $18.
A Sicilian dish that I
enjoy and have long wanted to prepare myself are arancini or
arancine. Sicily enjoys some of their dishes fried and arancini are
balls of risotto that can be prepared with a variety of different
ingredients that you add into the balls. They are then breaded and
fried. The name arancini actually stems from the word orange in
italian, arancia, since they are typically in the shapes of
oranges just not as large (although I will say I have seen some that
big). Many Sicilian dishes prepare arancini with peas and meat
sauce. Have fun with it and add whatever you like! I choose to use
the recipe from the Food Network with chef Giada
De Laurentis – Arancini di Riso with mushrooms, but I withdrew
the peas as I'm not a huge fan myself. I prepared my risotto with
portobello mushrooms and then topped my arancini with a bolognese
sauce. You can find my previous risotto
preparation blog as well as my more recent bolognese
blog to help you if you'd like to do the same.
Risotto with mushrooms
Prepping ingredients for Risotto: 2 eggs, 1/2 cup bread crumbs, day old risotto, 1/2 cup parmesan
Fried Arancini
Arancini with mushrooms topped with bolognese sauce
If you enjoy this article on Sicily there are lots more where that came from. Join my fellow bloggers and what they have to share on their sites.
Last week I attended a wine tasting at
the Tuscan Market
where I had the opportunity to meet Silvio,
whom is the North American Director for the Donnafugata winery of
Sicily. Silvio is also a certified sommelier by the Italian
Sommelier Association (AIS).
Silvio of Donnafugata
Rallo family, Left to Right: Antonio, Giacomo, Gabriella and Jose'
The Donnafugata winery holds 160
years of experience with owner Giacomo Rallo combining his experience with
his wife Gabriella and her experience in the industry. The two combined, along with
their two children Jose' and Antonio, are one of the limited wineries in Sicily that produce estate grown wines. Only
2% of wines produced in Sicily come from estate grown wineries
according to Silvio. The rest are produced by cooperatives.
Terraced hills of Pantelleria
Donnafugata, translating to “woman in
flight”, references Queen Maria Carolina, whom during the time of
Napoleon's arrival in Italy, fled the area and resided in the place
where the winery stands today. There are 3 areas where Donnafugata
grows its grapes including Pantelleria, Marsala and Contessa
Entellina all located in southern Italy in Sicily. Marsala and
Contessa Entellina are located in western Sicily where Pantelleria is
an island off the coast of western Sicily. The Marsala sight is the
main establishment where all the wines are aged and bottled.
Weather of Sicily Sicily's weather consists of considerable differences in day and
night temperatures that allow them to produce aromatic and mature
grapes in their vineyards. The vines, as shown here, in Pantelleria are low, broad bushes so that the grapes don't get fried by the sun and have a canopy of leaves to protect them.
Wines of Donnafugata
One of the eye catching things about
Donnafugata wines are their labels, which were created by
Gabriella. The woman on the label is actually a self-potrait of
Gabriella when she was in her 20's. I tasted a full flight of wines
from their two whites, Athilia & Lighea, to their 3 reds, Sedara,
Tancredi and Mille e Una Notte, finishing with their dessert wine,
Ben Rye. My favorites from the tasting that I want to share with you
are the two whites and the red Tancredi.
I chose both whites because they both
had unique qualities. The Donnafugata Anthilia is made of a grape indigenous to
Sicily called Catarratto that has some Inzolia blended in. Inzolia
is most similar to a chardonnay and is also known as ansonica in
Tuscany. Catarratto is the most planted grape in Sicily and is only
found there. It's best blended with other grapes as it is in
Anthilia. This wine was crisp, juicy and fresh with a little saltiness and
minerality on the lengthy finish. The Donnafugata Lighea is made of 100% Muscat
of Alexandria, also known as moscato bianco or known in Sicily as Zibibbo. This wine had a florally,
beautiful nose and was a dry, crisp style muscat. Very enjoyable!
For the reds I chose the Donnafugata Tancredi.
This wine consisted of mostly nero d'avola and cabernet sauvignon,
but also had 10% tannat, which is typically very austere and tannic. It was
very structured with intensity and the cabernet lended nice body to
the wine. It's aged 14 months in barriques and another 24 months in
the bottle. A great wine to pair with some food.
I can't ever pass up a good dessert
wine as well and Donnafugata makes the delicious Ben Rye made from
the moscato, zibibbo, grapes on the island Pantelleria. This wine is made in the
passito style where the grapes are dried to provide that deep
concentration of fruit making for a very enjoyable, unctuous wine.
Rich sweetness of honey and apricot. Need I say more?
Donnafugata's sustainability
Night harvesting
One of the admirable qualities of
Donnafugata is their focus on sustainability. One of the biggest
actions they take part in is night harvesting. By harvesting their
grapes at night they save 70% of their energy that is normally needed
to cool off the grapes for fermentation. They also use a lot of
solar panels for energy and their latest cellar is built underground
for additional savings. I have always been conscious of conserving
energy and recycling, but it wasn't until my recent trip to Alaska
where I saw the effects due to the glaciers retreating.
I can appreciate their efforts and I hope you can too!
Underground barriques
This winery participated in the recent
event, Cantine
Aperte, which I recently wrote about. You must explore it if you
are in Italy during May. They also have a great part of their
website where you can enter what you are eating to see what wine they
recommend or vice versa where you enter the wine you have purchased
and they suggest recipes to pair along with it. I offered my own
wine
and food pairing from a Wine Pairing weekend event that I'm
involved in monthly where this month's theme was “summer's bounty”.
I paired some light summer appetizers with Donnafugata wines so
don't miss it!
Pairings at Tuscan Market
Pairing at Tuscan Market
If you want to learn more about the unusual grapes of Sicily including the ones mentioned above check out this detailed wine grape varietal table.
Sicily is an island off the southern
part of Italy and it can be a world unto itself as I have friends
that don't claim to be italians, they are sicilian. Still to do this
day I don't understand that justification, but to each his own.
Sicily is the hottest and driest region in Italy and mostly has a
mediterranean climate, with a varying climate around the famous Mt.
Etna volcano. Part of the Appenine Mountains also run through part
of the island.
Sicily has always been famous for their
Marsala wine and its history has been known for producing bulk wines
and focusing on quantity over quality. A lot of this was created
around the 50's when the landowners distributed parts of their land
to the peasants that worked on the land. The peasants began growing
grapes on the land and as much as they could so that they could sell
it off to cooperatives. It was more about producing as much as
possible and making money than focusing on quality. Eventually many
of these cooperatives failed due to the withdrawal of funds from the
government that were subsidizing these businesses. Eventually more
private wineries were established that were intrigued in increasing
the quality of the grapes produced from there.
Sicilian Vineyard
Despite the high quantity of wines in
Sicily, only a small percentage in the single digits is allowed the
DOC status. The acreage in Sicily is dominated by whites, in
particular the grape, Catarratto, which is indigenous to Sicily and
can be found as the primary grape in Alcamo and it's also blended
into Marsala. Other whites of Sicily include grecanico, inzolia,
which is also known as ansonica, and in more recent years chardonnay.
The whites here are known to be better blended than serving as a
single varietal.
Despite the lower amount of reds that
come out of Sicily there are a couple reds known to the area
including nerello mascalese and one of the more well known reds is
nero d'avola, which is best compared to syrah. Nero d'avola has a
deep, rich color and typically has expressions of dark fruits. I
have seem some good values for this wine and think it's worth
exploring if you start off drinking anything in Sicily.
International varieties such as cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah
are also planted here.
This may be one of the biggest wine
producing regions, but it has a long way to go from its roots and
where it came from. Checking out some of the more well known
producers of the area and maybe starting off by seeking out nero
d'avola, which I recommend, is a good place to get a start by
exploring the wines of Sicily.
