Wines of Sicily

The other day I had the pleasure of attending a tasting of a dozen wines from Sicily.  We had a flight of four whites, four reds and four dessert wines.

It was a good tasting for me for a few reasons.  First off, the number of wines and the format really worked.  I felt I had time to take decent notes, while also listening to the presentation.  Second, the sommelier who organized the tasting was both passionate about the wines of Sicily and well prepared in terms of having selected interesting wines and having prepared a great booklet of maps, information about the region, and about the particular wines, along with space for taking notes.  A very good effort.  Finally, not knowing Sicily (except from the film Patton), not only were the producers unknown to me, but many of the grape varieties were as well.  And as someone looking to hit a century of varietals, I’m looking forward to adding Gracanico, Grillo, Carricante, and Nero d’Avola to the 100% list, as well as a number of others as components of blends.

The first tasting I covered was the Wines of Argentina, and I wrote a little about Argentina as a wine producing country, but didn’t cover any individual wines.  Next was the Champagne and Sparkling Wine tasting a couple of weeks ago, where I wrote up the tasting generally, and wrote specifically about the Ross Gower Sparkling Pinot Noir 2007.  This time, the wines at the tasting require me to redouble my efforts, and as such I will write a general Sicily article in addition to this gallery, but then over the next month or two I’ll go back and write up individual wines, ideally at a rate of one per week, so the blog isn’t flooded with a week or two straight of exclusive Sicilian content.  Also, I want to be able to write about what I’m drinking as I’m drinking it over the next week, especially as I have a new varietal on the way and a fun tasting at home planned for sometime soon.

So have a look at what was on offer, and expect more detail on most of them in the weeks to come.