Undiscovered Italy

This is Part II of Frank’s report on his recent trip to Sicily. Read Part I here.

RIOFAVARA

Tucked away off a roundabout outside Ispica, Riofavara is a relative newcomer even though its vineyards are almost a hundred years old. It wasn’t until 1994 that Massimo Padova and his sister Marianta began the process of redirecting their forty or so acres throughout the Val do Noto to winemaking. The past two decades have produced admirable results.

We arrived at their cantina as a busload of American wine professionals finished up their tour and tasting, fortuitous in that we received Massimo’s uninterrupted hospitality. This is a limited production winery, a mere 6000 cases a year dedicated to native grapes that make wine indicative of its place of origin, the first to produce Nero d’Avola with indigenous yeasts. As evidence of their commitment to sound agricultural practices, Riofavara opted to go beyond the usual standards for organic winemaking by meeting the stricter qualifications of ASCA (Agricultural Services Certified Organic) to attain certification.

All of which speaks to the goal of Massimo and his wife to leave something of value for their family, an inheritance made possible by a guiding philosophy of preservation of the land. He tells us, “For me, that is the first thing, my family. Then to make wine that is true, that is real and typical of here. These things are important and always together.”

As he pours it is obvious he is not a salesman, even though the wines can be purchased on site. Massimo will talk about them, but not push them or make observations as we sniff and sip. He is genuinely interested in our comments about what we are experiencing. As he puts it, “My job is done when the cork is put in the bottle, after that…” followed by a shrug. He admits that the business end pays the bills, but it is not what he is comfortable with, nor what drives him. The accolades and awards his wine receives is validation that Riofavara is on the path he chose.

The wines are excellent and, like those of Francesca Curto, make a statement for the ability of the Eloro DOC to provide the natural material for Nero d’Avola worthy of recognition. The Spaccaforno 2011 (the ancient name of Ispica) has that faint oceany scent that has me wondering if this is common for this region. That’s followed by intense and fruity aromas of cherry and red plums. It is lively in the mouth, the fruit flavors pop with the help of acidity spiked with minerals and an ongoing freshness that picks up a spicy, rustic edge. This is a wine whose elements are in sync, a harmonious introduction to unfiltered Nero d’Avola made with minimal intervention.

Named in honor of Massimo’s grandfather, Sciave 2010 is richer and has a finer texture, a wine from older vines that undergoes longer and more involved aging. The nose gives off waves of anise, red berries and Mediterranean herbs. It takes a while to discover its secondary sensations, but when they arrive it’s as if feral fruit has been naturally tamed by a seamless texture and the firmness and structure of unobtrusive tannins. Like the Spaccaforno, the whole has integrated so that the sum surpasses the parts. This is some serious Nero. A couple of weeks later, at a dinner with wine savvy friends, one made the comment that it was as if he was tasting Nero for the first time.

The revelation of the day is the Notissimo Moscato di Noto 2013, of which only 300 cases are made – the reason two bottles flew home in my luggage. It causes a head tilting, eye-rolling Andrew Zimmern reaction. This is unadorned, clean and refreshing Moscato, unlike the thicker Sicilian dessert wines from Lipari and Pantelleria.  In some years, 10% of the grapes will be sun dried in boxes – about as old school as it gets. Scents of citrus, oranges, fresh stone fruit drift from the glass. It is sweetly mouth filling without being dense. The juicy acidity is mildly spicy and keeps it lively through a warm, lingering finish.

Both Riofavara Nero d’Avola bottles are available in PA: Spaccaforno 2010 for $16.99 (#43301); Sciave 2010 for $27.99 (#43300).

TENUTA LA FAVOLA

To say that Corrado Gurrieri devotes his life to maintaining a connection to land that has been in his family for over 200 years is an understatement. He is foremost a farmer, but one who has undertaken projects whose importance transcends the boundaries of his vineyards. He was responsible for helping develop and codify the specifications for the Eloro DOC; he teams with universities and laboratories to promote agricultural research and, through his vineyards, to monitor the needs of the land; as a teacher, he hosts students at the winery in order to share ideas and methods.

That Corrado speaks no English was not a problem since it is his wife, Valeria, with whom I’ve arranged our visit. We first met at a dinner in Philadelphia in the spring of 2013. Valeria readily admits that coming from Palermo, “I was a city girl, I knew nothing of this type of life or how a farm worked.” She has adapted well, which became evident as she guided us around Casa di Natale, the winery named for Corrado’s grandfather. It occupies the crest known as Buonivini (good wines), the most prominent hillside between Ispica and the sea, bequeathed to Corrado in 1990.

Valeria walks us through the original palmento, and we step back into the early 20th century. Stone cubicles once used in the winemaking process contain religious and agricultural artifacts – a portable altar and candlestick holder for the visiting priest; straw covered demijohns; a peasant’s table and chair- each display reminiscent of a schoolchild’s diorama. She informs us that the daily ration for a worker was “…a half loaf of bread, a slice of cheese, a half- liter of wine, and one sardine,” and that pregnant workers would toil almost to the moment of delivery. She adds that Corrado’s grandparents were well known for caring and providing more for their workers’ welfare than was common.

Strolling among vines whose work is done for this harvest, Valeria points out dry vegetation between every other row and explains that Corrado has invented a device that flattens rather than cuts the growth. He is, she says with obvious pride, “…always looking to do more, to help the land, to understand the land.” Some would describe it as a passion, but it is more like a calling that has been answered by making wine that respects the natural order, resulting in La Favola earning organic certification.

Over the course of three hours we will be treated to hospitality that makes us feel more like old friends than visitors. Sitting under a canopy of century old trees on stumps surrounding a rough- hewn table, the three of us while away an early afternoon chatting about a variety of subjects and family matters that have nothing to do with wine. Valeria coats slices of bread with the farm’s olive oil as a prelude to a tasting that will soon be moved indoors by a light shower. We start with the Sicilia Bianco IGT 2013, a 70/30 Catarratto-Grillo blend that is refreshing, very much a crisp coastal white wine with scents of land and sea, local herbs and flowers and the citrus found in many Sicilian whites. It is savory, with lively acidity that never wavers, a perfect match for any number of seafood preparations.

We move on to La Favola Eloro DOC, their basic Nero d’Avola. The nose is clean and ripe with something spicy I can’t quite define. A rounded mouth and smooth tannins provide a platform for dark berries and fennel. Full of flavor, this is pleasant and easygoing, and has the acidity to complement a variety of dishes. Next, La Favolosa, also a Nero, more refined and aromatically complex with berries and the cocoa-like essence of carobs. Fuller bodied and just a bit more tannic, it has the same berry-fennel profile and stays focused from start to finish. Next Valeria pours Syna, a 65/35 mix of Nero and Syrah with aromas that appear to be common for this terroir – spices, herbs, flowers – but no hint of the salinity or ocean water I noticed on the Curto and Riofavara wines. It is full bodied and fills the mouth, the Syrah adding some depth and weight. Again, a wine which could be paired with a range of food from grilled fish to pasta with a meat based ragu.

Corrado drives up as we are preparing to leave. He proposes a toast with his Refosa Moscato di Noto 2012. The texture is midway between those of Curto and Riofavara. Aromas come in waves of peach, apricot, and fresh figs wrapped in a blanket of honey, all of that segueing to the palate along with a touch of roasted nuts. The aftertaste is spectacular.

Corrado regards this hillside as his and Valeria’s own slice of heaven, and once said that the goal was not to make the best wine in the world, but to make the best wine he could in their little corner of it. There is no better way to describe what they do.

Several of Tenuta La Favola’s wines are available via SLO in Pennsylvania.

Stay tuned for a final installment, where Frank recaps some Sicilian wines he’s tried since his return to the states.

On our last venture to Sicily four years ago, my wife and I had an interesting discussion with Chiara Planeta at the family’s Ulmo winery. At the time Sicily was being touted as the “new California”, which in my opinion was damning it with erroneous praise. That the island was shedding its history of being a source of massive quantities of fermented juice was undeniable. Chiara felt that Sicily was entering an exciting and crucial period from which it could move forward with vision and concerted effort or revert to the inertia of business as usual. There was no mistaking which path she would prefer, or that comparisons to the Golden State were unwarranted and unwanted. Sicily would become a “new Sicily” on its own terms.

Driving the meandering and often sign-less roads of southeastern Sicily requires patience and an innate sense of direction to fill in the gaps when the robotic voice of technology informs you it is “recalculating”. A sense of humor is also good to pack. I was reminded of Yogi Berra’s observation – “When you come to the fork in the road, take it”- as we sat deciding which divergent goat path would take us reasonably close to where we wanted to go. The reward for intrepid navigation was spending time with three small scale winemakers in the Eloro-Pachino region, an area of low rolling hills and coastal plains that fan out from the Baroque city of Noto to the sea.

If there is a birthplace of Nero d’Avola, it is here in the Val di Noto, south of the town that gave the “black grape” its name. It was singled out for selection by farmers centuries ago, long before increasing demand spread it across the island. If any parallel can be drawn to California it would be that Nero has become Sicily’s signature varietal, easily recognizable and readily available – like Cabernet. You can find Nero d’Avola juice bottled in Trentino. The grape’s inherent characteristics have, quite frankly, been diminished by too many sub-standard bottles.

The winemakers we met share a commitment to preserving their territorial heritage in order to make Nero d’Avola and other wines that truly represent their place of origin. They are caretakers who understand that they must give to the land in order to receive from it the prime material they need. For Francesca Curto, Massimo Padova, and Corrado and Valeria Gurrieri there’s a well- marked road to quality and authenticity.

AZIENDA CURTO

With a welcoming wave and a smile, Francesca Curto bounds down the worn stone steps of Tenuta Sulla to greet us. Her family has farmed this soil since 1670. Their story is that of countless Sicilian vignaoli – wine was made as a matter of course but not considered commercially viable until the 1990s. The azienda’s hillside between Ispica and Rosolini provides a panoramic scope of the rugged, sparse beauty of this less traveled corner of the island.

I’d become aware of Francesca through Robert Camuto’s excellent Palmento: A Sicilian Wine Odyssey, and mentally bookmarked her as someone to contact if I ever returned to Sicily. She proved to be amiable, passionate, and resolutely Sicilian. One of the things I wanted to ask Francesca was her position as a female winemaker in a traditionally patriarchal society, whether anything had changed since Camuto wrote about her five years ago. She pauses before answering, “For women of my generation I think it has become easier, a little. When I started I was not certain that what I said would be accepted. Now maybe people look at me as a winemaker, not just some woman who makes wine.”

She leads us through buildings fragrant with the must of fermentation that have been repurposed to house the necessities of a modern winery. As we stroll, Francesca greets her workers with the casual politeness common to Sicilians and makes sure to introduce them to us, unspoken recognition of their importance to the farm’s operation.

We enter the tasting room and Francesca guides us to a table set with plates of focaccia, bread, and her mother’s black olives coated with the farm’s oil. She apologizes for her inadequate use of English, yet in the next sentence tells us, “Sicilians are naturally diffident because of our history…it takes time for us to open up, to trust.” We assure her that the Sicilians we’ve encountered have been anything but, and that her use of a word most Americans don’t drop into a conversation requires no apology. I ask if her wines are diffident and she replies “We’ll see.”

Our tasting glosses over the technical points of winemaking, which Francesca says are kept simple in order to present the wine as it should be, to allow it to tell its story. She asks what the Nero d’Avola Eloro DOC 2013 is telling me. My reply that it smells briny, like sea water, draws a quizzical look, so I try to peg it more specifically as salinity, to which she nods. For what is a basic, uncomplicated wine it is clean and pleasantly fruity, no added frills from cellar manipulation.  Next Francesca pours the single vineyard Fontanelle 2009, a Nero from the Pachino area. It’s not opening up to her satisfaction, and with time growing short she re-corks the bottle and tells me to take it, try it later, and let her know what we think. Before we depart she wants us to sample Dulce Natum 2013, a Moscato di Noto dessert wine that is marginally sweet, with a honeyed texture and bracing acidity that gives it a refreshing lift similar to the passito wines from the island of Pantelleria. A perfect finish, literally and figuratively. Hours have flown by, and Francesca has graciously accommodated us during a routinely busy day. We exchange arrividercis and drive down a bumpy service road to our next stop.

Later that evening we revisit the Fontanelle. The passing hours have brought out darker fruit aromas and flavors, and it has developed suave elegance, with noticeable structure and a sense that there’s more to come with time. The finish is warm and complex but maintains its focus and vigor. The lady really does know her wine.

Unfortunately the wines of Azienda Curto are very hard to find stateside. For some Nero-based wines that are available in PA, see Mike’s recent article on Sicilian wine.

Stay tuned for Part II of Frank’s journey.