Talks about wine: Zibibbo, the wine to make merry

Let's start our talks about Sicilian wine from the Zibibbo (kind of muscatel wine), once named by Sicilians "the wine to make merry".

Brought by the Phoenicians to the Sicilian island of Pantelleria, the name Zibibbo comes from the Arab "zabib" meaning raisins. Pantelleria still is owns the biggest national production.

The prevailing use of the Zibibbo grape is to make wine or sun-dried as raisins. The wine is usually straw yellow with gold tints, very sweet, with a high alcohol content and a characteristic smell.

I would like to thank Aldo from Enoteca di Sicilia for being our guide to understand and appreciate this typical wine of Sicily.

"When we talk about Zibibbo, Aldo says, we refer both to the name of the vine and the wine we get from it. It is the perfect wine to match with typical Sicilian desserts which are greatly based on almonds suh as paste di mandorla (almond pastries) and cassata cake. Pantelleria as well as Marsala and Trapani are the areas devoted to the production in Sicily. Depending on the vintage time we have four types of different wines:

1. End of August harvest: the wine produced is a very fragrant and dry Zibibbo, a table wine perfect to macht with apetizers and fish-dishes, to drink at 12°/13°C.

2. September harvest: the wine becomes gold yellow, sweet, perfect to match with Sicilian desserts such as almond pastries, cassata and cannoli. To drink at 13°/14°C

I suggest to try "Zibibbo dolce" by Pipitone Spanò winery (about Eur 18,00).

3. End of September harvest: the grapes are dried in the sun on racks. The wine becomes passito, absolutely to drink alone at 13°/14°C.

"Vigna la Miccia" by Marco de Bartoli winery (about Eur 40,00) and "Kamma" by Murana winery (about Eur 40,00) are my favourites.

4. October harvest: the ripen grape becomes a more sweet muscatel one, amber in colour and aromatic. The wine is usually named Moscato di Pantelleria, perfect to match with dry desserts and pastries. To drink at 13°/14°C. It is impossible to find two similar passito wines, as bouquet and taste vary from wine to wine depending on the components. My list of top passito wines includes:

"Bukkuram" by Marco de Bartoli winery with a distinctive feature of apricot (about Eur 65,00)

"Martingale" by Murana winery, with its prevalent feature of dried figs (about Eur 70,00)

"Sangue d'Oro" by Carol Bouquet winery (about Eur 50,00)."

Good wines make people good-humored!

Picture: © Doriana Briguglio

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

E enotecaregionale@tiscali.it

Picture: © Doriana Briguglio