Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Enoteca Sicilia - the wine with its soul


Aldo is one of those people one should meet in life.
If you visit Catania I suggest to pop around his Enoteca di Sicilia ready to be overwhelmed by his infectious enthusiam.
Passionate, nice and friendly Aldo loves wines.

That's why Enoteca di Sicilia is not simply a wine shop. It is better a wine temple where knowledge, odours and favours reign undisputed.

Please, do not imagine Enoteca di Sicilia as one of those huge wine shops where you can find every kind of wine. Not at all! It is a small one room shop where Sicilian wines and wineries are selected exclusively for their quality production and not for the name of their brand.

You will be surprised by the numbers of small Sicilian wineries on the shelves, most of them producing just a few thounsands bottles.

But first, let me tell you that Aldo started to get in touch with the wine world during his studies in Greek philosophy, becoming a real passionate. Previously a history of art professor, during the '98 he decided that was not his way. In 2000 he launched the WWW - Wine Wednesday Workshops collecting friends and acquaintances around wine and food.
This is how the Enoteca Siciliana experience begun. Now it has established its reputation as the place where to taste and buy top Sicilian wines.

Since the very first beginning Aldo decided to select and suggest only Sicilian wines voicing great quality and impossible to find on the large-scale retail trade.

Sicily is the wine region par excellence. A perfect climate, a lot of sun and light give the vine in Sicily its best condition to ripen its bunches and give Sicily a great vocation to wine producing with wines of exceptional quality and of a very good relationship betweeen quality and price.

But, as Aldo says, there is a common trend to level any kind of wine to the consumer's taste.

"Each wine has its own peculiarities. Its diversity and its variety should communicate sensations, emotions, it should give a fund of sensory experiences always different one wine from then other. That's why as Enoteca di Sicilia, we have decided to avoid wines as copies of others, to escape from blazoned and prizewinner wines, from high-priced wines as false index of quality.
We said no to this market-oriented wine culture, indifferent to the territory and without identity.
We said and we say yes to those wineries exhaling the scents of an area, of a territory. Every winery has been selected according to careful criteria, above all a production from owned vines and wineyards. These wines may be different but all of them have their soul."

Enoteca di Sicilia is a great experience and Aldo is the perfect Cicerone along the wine routes of Sicily.

Federico (left) and Silvia (right) are his splendid children, helping Aldo to run Enoteca di Sicilia.
Enoteca di Sicilia
Viale Africa 31
95100 Catania (Sicily, Italy)
T + 39 095 7462210
Picture: © Doriana Briguglio

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thank you for the "Ferdinando"... it's Federico actually but... who cares! Lots of love! Federico.