"The first thing people associate with Sicily is food, quality food.
Crime was at the end of the list," says Francesca Planeta, quoting recent consumer research in the US. For a proud Sicilian who co-runs the Planeta wine business with her cousin, she reckons it's high time the story moved on from all those Hollywood-fuelled tales of the Mafia.
Sicily has been in the news for other reasons latterly what with the waves of refugees washed up on its shores which underlines the island's position as a stepping stone to mainland Europe. On a clear day you can see Africa from a city like Trapani and feel the dry heat blowing off the Sahara. At such times, the idea of growing grapes unless to make raisins or fortified wine like Marsala seems like folly.
And yet Sicily is known as the 'isola del vino', producing as much wine as Chile and South Africa. It is enough to fill 750 million bottles though 80% is sold in bulk as a largely anonymous commodity. When Diego Planeta, Francesca's father, started out in 1971 barely a trickle was bottled and the image of Sicilian wine was effectively non-existent. For the next 40 years, as president of the island's biggest wine co-operative, he helped drag the industry into the modern age despite the EU's best efforts.
Brussels showered subsidies on anyone who sent their grapes for distillation in a flawed bid to drain the European wine lake. Instead it merely created a whole new market for grape growers who became further disconnected from the real world of making drinkable wine. Eventually the money ran out, but most Sicilian co-operatives still have only a vague idea of what an actual wine drinker looks like.
Planeta the wine was launched in 1995 and was an instant hit with its international varieties. "When people discovered Sicily could produce a chardonnay or merlot at a great level, that's when Sicily became interesting for consumers," says Diego Planeta. The island was promoted as Europe's answer to the New World, but he feels things have progressed. "Today the concept of grape varieties looks a bit obsolete, and now it's more and more about terroir."
The island is blessed with an incredible diversity of vineyard sites that offer far more than 'sunshine in a glass', but perhaps the easiest way into Sicilian wine is through its native grapes.
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