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THE MODERN SICILIAN WINE INDUSTRY

EUROPEAN UNION POLICIES OF THE 1950S THROUGH THE EARLY 1980S

The 1957 Treaty of Rome ensured that goods could move freely across the borders of European Union member states.¹ Following this, the Stresa Conference of 1958 outlined agricultural policy for members of the EU, which supported the principle that they would act as a bloc to solve problems associated with the agroeconomic difficulties of individual members. The conference guaranteed farmers in the EU that prices for their products would not fall below a predetermined level common to all member states. These prices would ensure farmers a secure livelihood. The system was essentially one of price supports.

Before the creation of the EU, the wine industries of France and Italy, the two leading wine-producing nations of the world, were remarkably insulated from each other. The policies of the Stresa Conference were the first steps in breaking down that insulation. Because both France and Italy had, at that time, high levels of per capita wine consumption and access to the northern European markets that desired their wine exports, EU bureaucrats did not foresee that there would be mercantile conflict between these two wine production giants.

There was an expansion of vineyard planting in Italy during the Fascist period between the two World Wars. After 1950, vineyard acreage declined slightly until expansion began again in 1957. This decline was due to the extirpation or abandonment of old, diseased, and difficult-to-work vineyards and to the dwindling agricultural labor force. Vineyard acreage reached its postwar high in 1959, when 236,000 hectares (583,169 acres) produced 6,270,000 hectoliters (165,635,877 gallons) of wine.

Until the 1960s, the principal wine production of Sicily was dedicated to either high-alcohol white wines for Marsala production or high-alcohol red wines for export. These concentrated wines could only be produced with low yields and alberello (literally “little tree") training, a labor-intensive method of inducing low-lying vines to produce a small crop per plant. Before the 1960s, yields were low, on average less than fifty quintals per hectare (4,461 pounds per acre). In western Sicily most of the wine produced was white; in eastern Sicily, red. Much of the high-alcohol red wine was bulk wine that was shipped to northern and central Italy, where it was blended into local wine that needed color or alcohol.

During the late 1950s, French merchants purchased large volumes of cheap wine from other sources, notably Tunisia and Algeria, which were both still colonies of France. French wine technology, the most advanced in the world, helped develop their wine industries. Tunisia's independence in 1956 resulted in the deterioration of its wine industry. Its role as a supplier of bulk wine to France diminished. After Algeria's independence in 1962, its bulk wine exports to France also dwindled. Still, treaty obligations forced France to buy seven million hectoliters (184,920,437 gallons) of Algerian wine until 1970.

In 1968 the EU for the first time removed internal customs duties. This allowed for a free flow of products across member borders. Uniform customs duties on imports from nonmember states protected EU members equally. These policies made the EU a trading bloc. In the following year the EU began to standardize wine regulations. It approved member state laws that regulated the quality but not the quantity of wine produced. Yield regulations—part of the geographically based certifications appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) in France and denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) in Italy—associated with the quality wine categories made it highly unlikely that the quantity of quality wine would become a problem. France, however, expressed concern about the quantity of largely unregulated bulk wine, principally what was produced in Italy. Italian wine producers wanted to exploit two EU member markets, France and West Germany. Italian politicians successfully stifled the passage of EU regulations that would have limited Italian wine production. The most the EU could do was set up a system to monitor the quantities of wine produced by member states. Concern over oversupply remained. EU members discussed emergency policies such as the storage or distillation of surplus bulk wine as a means of controlling supply and demand, which would assure a bulk wine price that would protect the livelihoods of EU grape farmers and wine producers.

Domestic consumption trends within France and Italy aggravated the balance of wine trade between the two. Annual domestic wine consumption in France had registered an overall downward trend since at least 1960. In Italy, annual domestic consumption rose until 1969, when it began a downward trend that culminated in a steep decline from 1974 to 1978. These downward trends continued throughout the rest of the twentieth century. They set the stage for an enormous overproduction of wine after 1970 in Italy, particularly Sicily. Not only were the prices of Italian bulk wines generally lower than those of French bulk wines, but the Italian wine industry grew in leaps and bounds because it believed that there was unlimited potential in both overseas and domestic markets. The diminishing supply of Algerian and Tunisian bulk wine and the EU agreements that opened up trade among EU members induced French wine merchants to look for cheaper bulk wine than could be purchased in France. They found it in Sicily and Apulia.

A series of large harvests in the early 1970s in France and Italy began to create an oversupply of bulk wine in the EU market. French bulk wine producers, largely from the Languedoc area on the Mediterranean coast, had a difficult time selling their wine. They became infuriated when they saw Italian wine, purchased by French merchants, arriving in their country. In 1974, French wine producers began a series of provocative actions aimed at calling national attention to their problem.² They blocked the unloading of tanker ships at the Mediterranean port of Sète (named Cette until 1928), where most of the Sicilian bulk wine arrived. The “War of Sète” that these incidents kicked off lasted until 1980. Such demonstrations stirred the sympathy of French citizens. French politicians, under pressure to act, imposed import taxes on Italian wine. These taxes, however, violated the EU agreements guaranteeing free trade among member states. In 1976 the taxes were rescinded. By the end of the decade, of a total Sicilian production of about ten million hectoliters (264,172,052 gallons), five million (132,086,026) were exported. Eighty percent of Sicily's wine exports went to France, a pattern that resembled the one of one hundred years before; the remaining portion went mainly to Russia.

After Sicily reached its postwar vineyard acreage high in 1959, the modernization of viticulture began to have a profound influence on its wine industry. By 1984, vineyard acreage had dipped significantly, to 186,300 hectares (460,357 acres), about 80 percent of the 1959 figure. However, during the same period wine production rose from 6,270,000 hectoliters (165,635,877 gallons) in 1959 to its postwar high of 10,893,000 hectoliters (287,762,617 gallons) in 1984, an increase of almost 75 percent. Increases in grape yields per acre caused this remarkable about-face. The combined effects of higher yields per vine—due to modern agribusiness practices and technologies (irrigation, increased use of fertilizers, higher-yielding training systems, higher-yielding cultivars, and increased mechanization), in many cases advocated and financially supported by the EU—and diminishing per capita wine consumption in the wine-producing countries of Europe were creating a runaway crisis of overproduction. Yields increased twofold during the 1960s, from about thirty-four to seventy quintals per hectare (18,522 to 38,134 pounds per acre). From 1970 to 1979, yields almost doubled again, from 65 to 107 (the historic high point) quintals per hectare (35,410 to 58,291 pounds per acre). At EU meetings, the French government continued to lobby for controls on the quantity of wine produced by member states.

The three principal methods that EU bureaucrats devised to limit wine production were vine-pull schemes, bans on vineyard expansion, and forced distillation of excess wine. Vine-pull schemes, which paid farmers for each hectare of vines they uprooted, were one of the first solutions suggested for taking vineyards out of production. As early as 1953, the French government had considered its own vine-pull scheme. In 1976 the EU authorized payments to growers to permanently uproot vineyards. It also capped vineyard expansion. Unfortunately, the rapid growth in yields more than offset the reduction of acreage under vine.

Distillation was a more complicated solution. It was considered a solution of last resort because its effects were short term and because it occurred at the end of the production process, not the beginning. Subsidizing the distillation of such excess wine essentially meant that EU monies would pay for not only the growing of grapes, with all its costs, but also the making, storage, and distillation of the wine, plus various transport costs. Though EU countries as of 1969 had agreed that forced distillation could be used to deplete stocks of unsalable bulk table wine, it was only in 1979 that guidelines for the practice were first discussed. Bounteous harvests in 1979 and 1980 further aggravated overproduction problems in both France and Italy. The distillation solution was complex, and discussions continued until 1982, when the EU approved policies of voluntary and forced distillation. It set different percentages of “guide prices” for bulk table wine depending on whether wine producers distilled it of their own accord or under EU coercion. The EU used the following scheme (much simplified here, of course): The producers involved arranged to have their excess wine distilled at a distillery. The distiller paid the guide price to the wine producer. The EU then bought the distilled wine from the distiller. The EU paid for storage of the ethyl alcohol produced by distillation until it could be sold on the bulk industrial alcohol market. Guide prices for each season were based on the market prices for the previous one. It was a byzantine scheme.

The reforms of 1982 proved insufficient to control overproduction, however. EU bureaucrats had not foreseen that they would inadvertently give birth to an industry dedicated to making wine that would be distilled for the sole intention of collecting EU subsidies. By providing technological guidance and matching grants, the EU had helped make viticulture and vinification processes more efficient. Mechanization in vineyards and wineries, often subsidized by EU programs, lowered production costs. These factors not only contributed to the huge oversupply of wine but also made it possible for wine producers to profit substantially even when they sold their wine to the EU for distillation. The industrial production of wine with the express intent of selling it for distillation became both pervasive and perverse in Sicily, reaching its high point from 1986 to 1988, when nearly five million hectoliters (132,086,026 gallons) of wine were distilled each year, the same annual amount that had been exported for sale almost a decade earlier.

COOPERATIVE WINERIES

The wine-producing facilities in Sicily that became the principal protagonists in the making-wine-for-distillation industry were the cooperative wineries. In Italy, a cooperative winery is usually called a cantina cooperativa or a cantina sociale. Cooperatives seem, at least in theory, to be constructive and durable enterprises. Governmental or political bodies provide organizational support to farmers to help them set up cooperative wineries. Participating farmers become part-owners based on an initial contribution of investment capital and the subsequent dedication of all or nearly all of their grape harvests to the cooperative. The cooperative thus has fixed sources of grapes. The winery uses its income to cover its operating expenses and capital costs or to pay farmers higher prices for their grapes. As a result, its taxable profits are usually small. Moreover, cooperatives typically receive tax breaks because they are perceived as providing social benefits to their members. Italian cooperatives are often recipients of subsidies from the EU, the Italian state, and the regional governments (such as that of Sicily). Because cooperatives can deliver large numbers of votes to politicians and their affiliated parties, many become political protectorates. Using their connections, cooperatives tend to have significant leverage in getting regulatory issues decided in their favor.

The cooperative movement arose out of socialist sentiments that were popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The cooperative movement in Sicily got off to a bumpy start. The cantina sociale II Lavoro formed at the end of the nineteenth century but dissolved several years later. The first successful one in Sicily and one of the first in Italy was Cantina Sociale Marsalese, which was created in 1914. This dissolved in 1930 over a scandal regarding the illegal distillation of its wine stocks. Using the same facilities, in that same year, another cooperative formed: Cantina Sociale UVAM (Unione Viticoltori Agro Marsalese). It was unusual in that it was started solely with the capital of its farmer-partners. For twenty-five years it was the only cooperative in Sicily. At the end of the 1950s, only 6 percent of the Sicilian grapes made into wine were processed by Sicilian cooperatives, and nearly all of that by Cantina Sociale UVAM. While the growth of the cooperative movement had been slow in Sicily during the first half of the twentieth century, on the mainland of Italy it was much more successful. As of 1956, there were 169 cooperatives throughout Italy.

The fragmentation of large Italian landholdings into small ones helped set the stage for the rapid growth of cooperative wineries in Sicily. From 1950 to 1962, land redistribution reforms cut sizable chunks off large landholdings (latifundia) for this purpose. For example, Regaleali, Tasca d'Almerita's vineyard and winery site in central Sicily, was downsized from twelve to five hundred hectares (2,965 to 1,236 acres). The appropriated land was redistributed to landless farmers, many of whom took control of land on the farms where they had previously worked as sharecroppers. The Italian government also set up the Fund for the South (Cassa per il Mezzogiorno), which operated from 1950 to 1984. This was a development fund that supported land redistribution and farm and village construction projects; agricultural infrastructure projects such as the creations of dams, dikes, and reservoirs, largely for irrigation works; and the introduction of new agricultural techniques and equipment. The resulting increase in landholdings of smaller dimensions, combined with financial and technical support from the Fund for the South and subsequently from EU programs, stimulated the creation and expansion of cooperative wineries. In Sicily the coincidence of an oversupply of grapes, the rapid proliferation of cooperatives that could process these grapes into wine, and the cooperatives’ low costs of operation, which reduced their bulk wine prices below those of their competitors, made feasible the Sicilian export boom of the 1970s and the “wine lake” distillation saga of the 1980s.

The cooperative movement bettered the lives of innumerable poor farmers. Before the existence of cooperative wineries, growers had been at the mercy of merchants’ agents. These agents often ruthlessly took advantage of a buyers’ market for grapes. An agent, for example, would typically agree to buy a farmer's grapes at the harvest, then intentionally arrive late, after the harvest, when the grapes were on the verge of becoming unsalable. He knew that at this point the farmer would be desperate enough to sell at well below the agreed-upon price. Before the 1970s, small grape farmers made a precarious living in an inhospitable business environment.

The downturn in the mid-1960s of the Marsala industry, by far the largest purchaser of bulk wine in Sicily, left farmers in the island's west, where most of the grapes for Marsala were grown, in a desperate situation. Cooperatives allowed them to organize, to work in an organization that understood their interests, and to take the first step toward self-determination. The vast storage capacities of the cooperatives also let them concentrate large volumes of wine in one location, helping them to benefit all the more from the opening of the French market in the 1970s. The merchants’ agents who preyed on small farmers gradually disappeared. So did their employers, many of them small companies making Marsala. Large merchant concerns, some on mainland Italy and some in France, took their place, sending representatives to Sicily, usually to cooperatives, to purchase and arrange for the transport of large volumes of bulk wine.

Though the fragmentation of land ownership was one of the conditions that favored the creation of cooperative wineries, it also remains one of their innate weaknesses. Fragmented ownership obstructs the realization of the economies of scale possible in large agricultural operations, particularly those that involve mechanization. At cooperatives, 90 percent of the viticultural work is manual labor. The cost of the grapes is higher (by about 50 percent) than it would be if the cooperative could take advantage of economies of scale. Fragmentation also leads to disparities of grape quality among cooperative members. Farmer members by nature resist changes that markets ask for, demand, or necessitate. A lack of collaborative behavior stymies development. Extrafamilial collaboration is challenging for many Sicilians. They have historically preferred to work alone or within a family structure. In a cooperative, the farmer-owners meet regularly and elect an executive committee and/or president from their ranks. Typically the committee or president then selects a managing director, who hires a technical and marketing team, and fills all the other positions necessary to run a winery. Unfortunately, with the exception of the technical team, these positions customarily have been handed out as favors to influential farmers, politicians, and friends and relatives of the executive board. The selection process typically takes little account of training, experience, or talent.

Sicilian cooperatives largely sell grape juice (must) and wine in bulk. The must is mechanically concentrated into a syrupy sweetener called concentrated rectified must. In 2006 this accounted for 25 percent of the Sicilian wine grape harvest. EU subsidies supported the production of the must as a means of venting excess juice and wine. Italian wine law requires wine producers to use concentrated rectified must as the means of enriching grape juice to achieve higher alcohol levels in the finished wine. Cooperatives unload must and wine quickly at low margins rather than bottling, branding, and selling their wines to specific markets. Even if cooperatives wanted to take advantage of the profits associated with selling wine in bottle, the characteristic incompetence of their untrained marketing teams would doom such initiatives to failure. Even so, loans for cooperative development and creation have often been secured based on business plans that feature increased profits from bottling and merchandising. The weaknesses of the marketing team become a problem only a decade after a cooperative's founding, when stocks of bottled wine remain unsold, loans have dried up, and debts have devoured income. Cooperatives thus typically have enabled farmers to take the first step toward self-determination, but not the second or the third.

After cooperative wineries, particularly in western Sicily, facilitated the export bulk wine boom of the 1970s, they transferred their energy toward obtaining distillation subsidies. Their near-monopoly of the Sicilian bulk wine industry and their close ties with political structures were advantageous. Cooperative creation and expansion intensified during the 1970s and early 1980s. By 1970 there were seventy-three cooperatives vinify-ing 37 percent of Sicily's grapes. By 1980 there were 197 cooperatives, which processed 51 percent of all Sicilian wine grapes. As of 1987, 191 cooperatives produced 78 percent of the volume of Sicilian wine, but 97 percent of what they sold was bulk wine.

EU POLICIES FROM THE MID-1980S THROUGH THE 2000S: THE DECLINE OF COOPERATIVES

Distillation schemes kept the cooperatives busy throughout the 1980s. Sicilian politicians did their best to preserve distillation subsidies. By the mid-1980s, it became evident that distillation policies had neither remedied overproduction nor helped Sicily to restructure its wine industry in a positive direction. In 1984 the EU reduced subsidies for the production of must concentrate, which has a number of uses, including the enrichment of Italian wines. Until the early 1980s, Italian wine law allowed producers to add as much as 15 percent of other wine products to DOC wines. When this loophole was closed, the Sicilian bulk wine industry lost an important source of income.

Before the twentieth-century advent of European wine law, the wine industry and its commentators recognized the existence of unethical blending. But even after wine laws made some of that blending illegal, unethical, if not illicit, blending continued. It was well known that Sicilian bulk wine was still being added to all sorts of wines, both in Italy and abroad. The Sicilian wine industry profited from this business. In 1986, a seemingly unrelated incident had a profound effect on this illegal market. Producers in northwest Italy added methanol to wine, killing or blinding thirty-four people. Regulatory authorities immediately put all shipments of wine under close scrutiny. This disrupted the underground flow of illegal Sicilian bulk wine into mainland Italy, France, and other countries.

In 1987 the EU faced the entry of yet another huge overproducer, Spain, into its economic community. This new source of bulk wine not only was a major competitor to Italy in the EU trading bloc but also compelled EU bureaucrats to more carefully monitor and enforce the criteria for distillation subsidies that the reforms of 1982 had established. Still, the interventions were insufficient to stabilize the market. An aggressive EU vine-pull program went into effect in 1988. Vine acreage in Sicily dropped from 202,000 hectares (499,153 acres) in 1987 to 144,152 hectares (356,207 acres) in 1995. Additional subsidies supported the changeover to recommended industries such as vegetable and fruit farming. The result can be seen in the fields of polyethylene tubular tents (greenhouses, or serre, the plural of serra) that line the southeastern coastline of Sicily.

Reforms since 1999 have sought to eliminate EU market intervention, not always successfully. Crisis distillation went into force as of 2000. Instead of following a complex tiered system of forced and optional distillation measures decreed by Brussels, regions of the EU were left to regulate their own oversupply problems. When they could not and oversupply reached crisis levels, certain regions asked their state governments to seek financial support from the EU to pay for crisis distillation. The EU in 2006 balked at continuing this program, concerned that its distillation strategies were not effective in reducing overproduction. It singled out France and Italy for making excess demands on the fund and approved distillation of lower quantities of wine and at lower prices than the two countries wanted. For the 2009–10 crisis distillation campaign, Sicily requested and received more of this assistance than any other region of Italy. The tally for Sicily was 174,054 hectoliters (4,598,020 gallons) designated for crisis distillation. Apulia was second in distillation requests, with 120,749 hectoliters (3,189,851 gallons).

Italy has continued to make requests for crisis regulation. As of 2010, farmers could apply to receive EU funds for the premature removal of grapes, an action called vendemmia verde ("green harvest"). This is considered an anticrisis tactic because its implementation anticipates rather than responds to a wine oversupply. It targets farmers for financial assistance more precisely than coerced distillation, which spreads the money to wine producers, distillers, and support industries. Vendemmia verde subsidies alone, however, cannot cure the fundamental problem, which is too many vineyards producing grapes that do not have a market. In addition to vendemmia verde, the EU has continued to offer assistance for grubbing up vines.

During the 1990s, with wine distillation subsidies waning, many cooperatives began to fold or combine with others to form larger entities. The idea was that economies of scale could help improve efficiency. By 2008 there were about eighty Sicilian cooperative wineries, producing about 80 percent of Sicilian wine. However, New World countries, such as Australia and Argentina, with more advanced technologies and greater economies of scale, particularly at the viticultural level, threatened to outcompete Sicily in making wine at all price points, including for the bulk market. Though this domination has not occurred, the bulk market has continued to deteriorate as consumer demand for low-cost wine has waned. Cooperatives in particular have not been able to transition from making low-cost bulk wine to higher-cost bottled wine. Without capable direction, the cooperative system seems doomed to failure.

In an effort to prevent the demise of smaller cooperatives, in 2010 the regional government of Sicily proposed awards of up to five hundred thousand euro for new consolidations of existing cooperatives. One beneficiary of this program was a large consolidation that was born in 2008 when two cooperatives united under an umbrella company, Cantine Siciliane Riunite. As of 2012, its member cooperatives numbered ten, with a total 13,375 hectares (33,050 acres) of vineyards. The managing team commercializes, promotes, and bottles the wines of the members. At Vinitaly 2012 the cooperative presented its first wine, Sicili, a white made by blending lots of Catarratto wines of member cooperatives.

THE SETTESOLI EXCEPTION

There is one exceptional cooperative: Settesoli. Settesoli took initial steps toward bottling quality wine in the mid-1970s. As of 2010, 58 percent of its wine production was sold in bottle—that is, thirteen million bottles annually. The Settesoli cooperative is in Menfi, a city on the southwest coast of Sicily, and played a seminal role in the renovation of Sicily's quality wine sector, characterized by privately owned companies. It was formed in 1958. Typically, small, relatively poor farmers are the founding members of cooperatives. Settesoli's farmer-founders came from the upper, middle, and lower classes, and its socioeconomic mix remains unusually diverse. Today the combined six thousand hectares (14,826 acres) of Settesoli's twenty-three hundred cooperative farmers account for 5 percent of Sicilian vineyards, making the company the largest in Sicily to grow its own grapes and vinify and commercialize its own wines. Its wines have a reputation for value for money and are well distributed in domestic and export markets. Beyond the diversity of its founding members, another underlying reason for the success of Settesoli could be its location. During the 1600s, Menfi was one of several areas in Sicily where farmers were allowed to lease property as a step toward ownership, in the arrangement called enfiteusi. In most areas of Sicily, landless farmers worked for only a percentage of their crop. The empowerment associated with working toward land ownership and hence toward self-determination may be embedded in the psyche of Menfi's citizens. Today it is one of the cleanest and best-organized towns in Sicily. Citizens speak well of their town and its key economic engine, the Settesoli cooperative.

Most Sicilians and foreign specialists attribute a large part of Settesoli's success to its remarkable former president, Diego Planeta. He became president of Settesoli in 1973 and resigned in May 2012. Forward-thinking and dynamic, he skillfully managed the company's business and internal politics, relationship with the region of Sicily, and position in world markets. Early in his career, Planeta believed that world consumers would take note of Settesoli and Sicilian wines only if those they first encountered were similar in style and name to wines already present in their own markets. In 1985 he advocated the experimental planting of internationally recognized yet nonnative varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Merlot, and Syrah. He linked these plantings and those of native varieties with the innovative research of the Istituto Regionale della Vite e del Vino ("Regional Institute of Vine and Wine” see below). As the trial results came in, Settesoli paid its farmers to plant those varieties that performed the best and were likely to result in wines that the market would appreciate. In 1989 Planeta lured the Piedmontese enologist Carlo Corino away from his job as the technical director of Montrose Wine in Australia to become Settesoli's chief enologist. Corino had grown up in and was trained at the School of Enology in Alba, the town closely associated with the wines Barolo and Barbaresco. His professional background, a blend of Old World and New, was ideal to help project Settesoli into the modern wine world. From 1989 to 1994 he introduced many of the technologies that he had seen in Australia to Settesoli. His focus was on preserving the freshness and flavor of harvested grapes in the final wine.

PROTAGONISTS OF THE QUALITY WINE INDUSTRY FROM 1950 TO 1990

Before the 1950s there were few producers of quality wine in Sicily. Although it had many producers of Marsala, a fortified wine that became world famous in the nineteenth century, Sicily had only two surviving producers of quality still wine: Duca di Salaparuta, known for its brand Corvo, and Tasca d'Almerita, known for its brand Regaleali. Duca di Salaparuta has the longest history, dating back to 1824. Succeeding the founder, Giuseppe Alliata, and his son Edoardo was Edoardo's grandson Enrico, who successfully guided Corvo through the difficult first half of the twentieth century. Enrico had worked in a Bordeaux winery and returned to further refine Corvo Bianco and expand the range of wines produced. Duca di Salaparuta showed that Sicilian wine, previously known as alcoholic and coarse, could be stylish and elegant yet modest in alcoholic degree. In 1961 Enrico's daughter Topazia sold the winery and brand to the region of Sicily. ESPI (Ente Siciliano per la Promozione Industriale), a department for industrial promotion, managed the winery for the government. Remarkably, under public ownership the company expanded and maintained high standards. During the 1970s, Corvo White and Corvo Red became the first Sicilian wines to gain wide popularity in the United States, though the label mentioned only Italy, not Sicily, as the site of origin. Corvo's U.S. importer, Paternò, played an important role in its success. By the 1980s, Duca di Salaparuta was producing eight million bottles of wine per year, a staggering number for a Sicilian wine producer. From 1974 to 1997 its Piedmontese winemaker, Franco Giacosa, traveled throughout Sicily, selecting the best sources of fruit. He helped perfect the estate's top red wine, Duca Enrico. This 100 percent Nero d'Avola wine, first issued with the 1984 vintage, established the potential of this vine variety.

By 1880 the Tasca d'Almerita family was bottling wine under the name of their palazzo, Villa Camastra, which had extensive vineyards in the plain surrounding Palermo. Though production was more limited than at Duca di Salaparuta, the wine won awards and acclaim. Production stopped after the turn of the twentieth century. The family also owned an enormous farm, Tenuta di Regaleali, at Vallelunga in the north-central highlands of Sicily. Though there were vineyards there, the modern era of Regaleali wines began in 1957, when Giuseppe Tasca and his wife, Franca Cammarata, took over management of Regaleali. During the 1960s they emphasized in-bottle over bulk production and developed their estate's principal wines, Regaleali Bianco and Regaleali Rosso. During the 1970s they introduced modern vine training and trellising to the farm, expanded viticultural activities, and refitted the winery. In 1970 Riserva del Conte, renamed Rosso del Conte in 1979, became a standard-bearer for quality Sicilian red wine. This wine was labeled as being produced by Regaleali initially, then as produced by Tasca d'Almerita, to disassociate it from the less-expensive Regaleali brand. Lucio Tasca, Giuseppe's son, had begun working alongside his father as early as 1961. He moved the estate into the current of world wineries that vinified French vine varieties. With difficulty, he convinced his father to allow him to experiment with one half acre. In 1985, Lucio planted Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Sauvignon Blanc. The Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon gave great results and the Pinot Noir good ones. The Sauvignon Blanc was similar to the estate's preexisting Sauvignon Tasca, an old biotype identified by Tasca in the 1950s. The estate's first experimental Cabernet Sauvignon was the 1988 vintage. Its first commercial vintage of Chardonnay was the 1989. Both wines were released to the market in 1990. Pinot Noir was used in a blend with Chardonnay to make a sparkling wine that debuted in 1990 as a wine that the Tasca family shared with friends. The company purchased its first French barriques in 1988. The Tasca bottlings of Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon were positively reviewed and brought attention to the estate. They were the first internationally recognized versions of these varietal wines in Sicily.

During the nineteenth century, a small number of wealthy Sicilian wine producers sought enological help directly from France. During the twentieth century, enologists from Piedmont were the most influential. In that region of Italy, careers in viticulture and vinification are considered worthy and respectable, much more so than in Sicily. The caliber of Piedmontese wine professionals has been very high. Moreover, the region's wine merchants have been deeply involved in the transport, transformation, bottling, and sale of Sicilian wine throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the 1960s Sicily was transitioning from supplying the world with roughly made vino da taglio to, during the 1970s and 1980s, making stable, good-value table wines. A key person who brought the requisite vinification technology to Sicily during this era was the Piedmont enologist Ezio Rivella. He was one of Italy's first enological consultants. In 1963 he formed a wine consultancy company, Enoconsult. In that year, he visited Sicily to investigate its wine industry and develop clients. He consulted for Settesoli in 1965 and 1966. Tasca d'Almerita also wanted to hire him in 1966. Explaining that he was too busy to care for the company personally, he assigned an associate at Enoconsult, Lorenzo “Renzo” Peira, to be responsible for the technical oversight of Tasca's wine production. Rivella's company consulted for Duca di Salaparuta from the mid-1960s to 1974 and from 1991 to 1997. It also assisted Donnafugata, which emerged as an important Sicilian wine producer during the late 1980s, for a couple of years after its inception in 1983.

While Duca di Salaparuta and Tasca d'Almerita largely built the foundation on which the modern quality wine industry rests, other estates also played important roles. At Milo on the east face of Etna, the Nicolosi family had set high standards of viticulture and vinification since the eighteenth century. On a small scale, in 1948 Carmelo Nicolosi Asmundo bottled Etna Rosso. In 1971, Rapitala, at Alessandro di Camporeale near Palermo, began the production of quality wine. Three years earlier the Frenchman Hugues Bernard had married Gigi Guarrasi, who owned the estate. Bernard moved to Rapitala and brought his French sensibilities about wine with him. During the 1980s, he added French varieties to the native ones already planted there. The first vintage of Tentua Rapitala to be bottled was the 1976. The next step in the ascent toward the modern quality wine industry was Donnafugata. Giacomo Rallo foresaw both the problems that the Marsala industry would face in the ensuing years and the eventual opening of the quality wine sector. In 1983 he left the Marsala house Diego Rallo & Figli, which his family owned, and, with his wife, Gabriella Anca Rallo, established the wine estate and brand Donnafugata. Their wines, many of which are named after characters and places in the literary works of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author of The Leopard, sparked the public's imagination. Meanwhile, in 1980 three friends studying at the University of Palermo, Giambattista ("Titta") Cilia, Giusto Occhipinti, and Cirino Strano, fused their surname initials to create COS, the name of their winery in Vittoria in Sicily's southeast. Though Strano left the partnership in its early days, his S has stuck. Eager to discover the wine world beyond Sicily, Cilia and Occhipinti traveled to Tuscany and France. In 1983 they bought used French barriques from the Piedmont producer Angelo Gaja. In the late 1980s they purchased new French ones.

During the 1980s, Sicily's leading light in the drive for quality was a race car driver turned winemaker. Marco De Bartoli took over one of his family's estates, Vecchio Samperi, in 1978. He believed that Marsala wine had lost its historic quality and its ability to compete in the quality wine sector. He purchased barrels of different fine old Marsalas, then masterfully blended and bottled them. His Vecchio Samperi, created in 1980, caused a stir in the Marsala community. It was not fortified, which, by law, all wines that bear the name Marsala must be. As a result, De Bartoli was not allowed to put the appellation Marsala on the label. His wines and boundless enthusiasm and pride found advocates among journalists, though his Marsala was never a market success. Beginning with its first vintage in 1984, De Bartoli's Passito di Pantelleria Bukkuram brought attention to the sweet wines of the island of Pantelleria. He made a style that respected tradition but was less oxidized and fruitier than extant versions. The wine became a sensation. Unlike those of Vecchio Samperi, sales of Bukkuram were brisk. While most Sicilians winemakers in search of quality adopted international, particularly French, vine varieties and techniques and made wines stylistically similar to French ones, De Bartoli celebrated the raw materials of Sicily.

THE DIEGO PLANETA ERA AT THE IRVV

In 1985, Diego Planeta assumed a role that put him at the center of the Sicilian style and quality revolution of the 1990s. He became president of the Istituto Regionale della Vite e del Vino (IRVV, “Regional Institute of Vine and Wine"). The mission of the IRVV, a state-owned company founded in the early 1950s by the region of Sicily, is to help the Sicilian wine industry improve viticulture, wine production, and marketing techniques. The IRVV is charged with conducting research and making it available to all Sicilian grape farmers and wine producers. The timing of Planeta's presidency was crucial. In the early and mid-1980s the Sicilian wine industry was drowning in a sea of low-quality wine without any solution in sight.

The selection of Planeta was revolutionary. Putting an entrepreneur and the president of a winery in this position gave the IRVV the opportunity to move in a dynamic direction. Through his work at Settesoli, Planeta had an intimate understanding of cooperative associations and the political dynamics of the EU, Italian, and regional controls and subsidies. He understood both the bulk and the quality wine markets. The results of the IRVV research were made available to sectors of the Sicilian wine industry.

During the 1960s and 1970s the IRVV put in place the initial scaffolding to support research focused on assessing new technologies, which it made available to vine growers and wine producers. Bruno Pastena, a professor of viticulture at the University of Palermo, in Sicily's west, and Carlo Nicolosi Asmundo, a professor of enology at the University of Catania, in the east, were focal points of this research and its related scientific dialogue. Then, in the 1970s, Nicola Trapani began his long research and teaching career at the Technical Agrarian Institute in Marsala. He, Pastena, and Asmundo became the teachers of the key generation of winegrowers and enologists who would renovate the Sicilian wine industry.

At the beginning of the 1980s, there were stirrings that set the stage for the revolutionary perspectives and great achievements of Planeta's IRVV presidency. In those years, the IRVV agronomist Vincenzo Melia, with the help and guidance of Pastena, set up a program that placed experimental vineyards throughout Sicily starting in 1984. These vineyards tested not only viticultural techniques but also the potential of Sicily's native varieties and those varieties in the process of a rapid international diffusion, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chardonnay, mostly selected and perfected in France. The early results were so exciting that they gave impetus to larger strides.

The year after Planeta became the president of the IRVV, he set up a collaborative program between it and the Istituto Agrario di San Michele all'Adige (IASMA), Italy's foremost viticultural and enological research institute. Attilio Scienza, a professor at the University of Milan and a leading expert in the selection of clones and vine varieties, was then the IASMA's general director. The University of Palermo and Marsala's Istituto Tecnico Agrario ("Technical Agrarian Institute") were also actively involved in the research. The Menfi area became the focus of their viticultural experimentation, particularly the vineyards owned by members of the Settesoli cooperative. The IRVV and the IASMA studied the performance of fifty varieties, both native and international, which were grafted onto diverse rootstocks and farmed using diverse training systems.

In 1990 the IRVV rented a small space at the Spadafora winery at Virzi for research microvinifications. Soon 250 were under way. Grapes culled from the experimental vineyards were brought to Virzi, where technicians of the IRVV and the IASMA studied their vinification and the resulting wines. According to Scienza, the most interesting varieties from these studies were Fiano, Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah. Blends of these wines and native varieties were studied to determine the best partnerships. When the initial results were in, the IRVV invited groups of thirty Sicilian wine producers at a time to taste the experimental wines and to discuss them with IRVV technicians. To fill the first thirty seats, the IRVV sent out 150 invitations. According to Planeta, only about ten producers accepted, and only three attended, representing Tasca d'Almerita, Settesoli, and the new Planeta winery. Soon, however, interest in what the IRVV was doing spread. Wine producers who did not want to be left out of the excitement started their own experimental vineyards, which they linked to the IRVVs work. Sicily's most important winery of the 1980s, Duca di Salaparuta, did not participate. In general, the IRVV was more active in western than eastern Sicily.

Planeta believed that he had to open the eyes of Sicilians to what was going on beyond Sicily. He knew that if quality wine was to be developed, Sicily would have to compete on the world stage. He sent members of an IRVV committee that was composed of mayors, winery owners, heads of cooperatives, and so forth with several IRVV employees to the Trento province of northern Italy to visit the IASMA. Faculty members and researchers exposed them to the latest viticultural and enological technologies. Planeta also organized a group of young Sicilian enologists to be trained as the vanguard for the island's new quality wine industry. He directed them to spend the first year of their program observing the innovation that was taking place all over the world and then in the second year to implement that innovation in Sicily. In the early 1990s the IRVV organized educational excursions for Sicilian enologists to visit the wine industries in France, California, Australia, and South Africa. During the same period, it organized the first Sicilian delegations to Vinexpo in Bordeaux. These initiatives helped to expose Sicilian wine producers to the wine world.

Under Planeta's direction, the IRVV invited the participation of some of the most highly regarded wine experts in Italy. Besides seeking the assistance and advice of Scienza, it engaged Giacomo Tachis, the former chief enologist at Marchesi Antinori and a consulting enologist for many well-known Italian producers. For marketing, Planeta sought the assistance of Giampaolo Fabris, a professor at the University of San Raf-faele and a specialist in the sociology of consumers, best known for his promotional campaigns for Barilla and the creation of its Mulino Bianco brand. Fabris kept the IRVV and the Sicilian wine industry informed of market trends. He also developed mechanisms such as conferences that communicated the improvements in Sicilian wine to the trade and consumers.

THE IMPACT OF GIACOMO TACHIS

Giacomo Tachis, as the most celebrated enologist in Italy, the architect of Tignanello and Sassicaia and other legendary wines, was the idol of young Sicilian enologists, wine professionals, the wine press, and connoisseurs of Italian wine. Though the Marchesi Antinori company had been the principal driving force behind the rise of Tuscan wine during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Tachis was the technical architect of the style of wines for which Marchesi Antinori became known.

Without Tachis, Italy's entry into the post-World War II international wine market would have been delayed. Of Greek ancestry, born and educated in Piedmont, he had a profound respect for French wine. In the early 1950s be began a lifelong correspondence with Emile Peynaud, a professor at the University of Bordeaux and a consultant to some of the most important Bordeaux châteaux. Peynaud, as a teacher and a friend, passed on to Tachis his perspectives and methods. In the 1960s and 1970s, Peynaud was the pivot point for changes in Bordeaux enology. His influence did much to alter Bordeaux's red wine flavor profile. He advocated harvesting at higher than customary levels of ripeness, complete control of malolactic fermentation, maceration customized to grape skin conditions, and maturation that effectively used oxygenation, all of which helped to protect and preserve ripe fruit character of the wine while making its palate supple yet dense and pleasantly tactile. From Peynaud's perspective, vegetal smells, excessive sourness (high acidity), bitterness, thinness (low alcohol), and coarse-textured astringency were to be avoided in red wines. Tachis translated the Peynaud model into the enological context of Italy.

Tachis saw his job consulting for the IRVV as an exciting challenge. Both he and Planeta felt that for Sicily to be taken seriously as a quality producer on the world stage, great red wines with a distinctly Sicilian taste would have to be developed. During the early 1990s, about 80 percent of the vineyards in Sicily were planted with white grapes. Given Sicily's history of bulk wine and little else, Tachis had a relatively blank slate to work with.

Tachis was familiar with the climatic parameters of Sicily. Its ample sunlight and heat and lack of summer and harvest rain were similar to the climate of the Tuscan coast, where he had done much of his pioneering work on the Super Tuscan wine Sassicaia. In Sicily, grape skins and seeds become so physiologically mature that anthocyanins, the dominant pigment compounds in most grape skins, are easily extractable. Traditionally, Sicilian red wine maceration periods were brief, usually one to three days. A lack of temperature control and hygiene had made long macerations unsafe. Tachis preferred higher than normal pHs in red wines so that the expression of sourness did not cover or confuse that of astringency. He knew that the developed tannins of Sicilian red wines would need less maturation time in new barrel and less aging in bottle. With the wine having less contact with new oak, oak smells would mask fruit smells less. Wines could be released earlier than would be the case in northern Italy.

When considering Tachis, we have to remember that his inspiration was the red wine of Bordeaux. He was, comparatively speaking, less familiar with Burgundy varieties and Burgundian wine technology. In Tuscany he had often recommended that Sangiovese wines include some Bordeaux varieties, particularly Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, to add color and texture. Similarly, because of his great familiarity with Bordeaux wine technology, he also prescribed Bordeaux techniques when making Sangiovese wine. For example, he generally advocated pump-over and closed fermentation vats, typical to Bordeaux, over punch-down and open fermentation vats, typical to Burgundy. Tachis was an important influence who pushed traditional Tuscan wine flavor in a Bordelais direction, which was more likely to be appreciated by international wine critics and non-Italian consumers.

Like his master Peynaud, Tachis had more expertise in dry red than dry white wine production. Bordeaux wine producers had not put great effort into producing top-quality dry white wines until the mid-1980s, when they adopted Burgundian barrel fermentation techniques, particularly in the Pessac-Léognan appellation. While the world model for top-quality red wine has been Bordeaux, the world model for top-quality dry white wine has been Burgundian barrel-fermented Chardonnay. Though Tachis consulted for estates, such as Querciabella in Tuscany, that made excellent barrel-fermented Chardonnays, he was not recognized as a white wine specialist. Nor was he known for his expertise in rose, sparkling, or fortified wine production.

However, he took a special interest in and had great appreciation for what are commonly called dessert wines. In this case, dessert wines refers to a category that contains dry as well as sweet wines and those that are often consumed by themselves or as an aperitif with a small plate of cheese, fruit, and nuts. These wine types had a long history of production in the Mediterranean area. Tachis studied these wine types from historical and cultural perspectives. He wrote a book about Vin Santo, a traditional wine typical to Italy, particularly Tuscany. Vin Santo wines can range from dry to sweet. Like many Mediterranean dessert wines, they are made by fermenting dried or semidried grapes. Though Tachis has a profound understanding of and appreciation for historic techniques and styles of dessert wines, when consulting for clients he would recommend moving their wines toward a profile that he thought modern markets would better appreciate. This profile emphasized golden-yellow over amber coloration, fresh fruit over nutty aromas and the piercing pungency of volatile acidity, and levels of acidity that supported sweetness and gave length to the finish. He favored carefully monitoring and controlling the desiccation of grapes. He advised producers to avoid conditions in which the coincidence of direct sunlight and intense heat limits enzymatic activity in the grape skins and increases oxidation. Such enzymatic activity releases exotic flavors from the skins. He also recommended fermentation and maturation practices that reduced oxidation and the loss of fruit. He encouraged producers to have an open mind regarding the use of selected yeasts. He advised low-temperature fermentation and maturation in cool environments where oxygen contact was controlled.

It was with these predilections that Tachis assessed the microvinifications at Virzi in 1992 and subsequent years. He identified Nero d'Avola as the variety that expressed Sicilianness for red wines. The focus of its use was in southeast Sicily. As he had in Tuscany, Tachis prescribed additions of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Syrah to supply more depth of color and more structure, principally astringency. He believed that Nero d'Avola would be less successful in the market as a monovarietal wine. Tachis did not see much potential for Nerello Mascalese, the principal variety in the Etna area. For him, its color was too pale, its palate too sour, and its texture too harshly astringent. On the other hand, he was fond of Frappato, a variety historic to the Vittoria area. He liked its fresh fruitiness and acidity. Tachis gave rave reviews to several samples of Pinot Noir grown at Castiglione di Sicilia in the Etna area. He put forward the possibility that Etna Pinot Noir could one day rival red Burgundy.

Though Duca di Salaparuta's Duca Enricos of the late 1980s and early 1990s had quietly demonstrated that Nero d'Avola could be successful as a principal variety and even as a monovarietal wine, Tachis's advocacy convinced Sicilian winemakers that Nero d'Avola was the Sicilian quality red grape. Inspired by his advice, farmers and wine producers planted it nearly everywhere. They planted it in locations both good for the variety and bad. Because journalists were awarding high marks to dark, thick, ripe, and alcoholic wines, producers across Sicily making Nero d'Avola wine did what they could to sculpt their wines accordingly. The preferences of journalists reinforced, if not exaggerated, Tachis's prescriptions. In many cases, the additions of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, and other varieties covered the character of Nero d'Avola to the extent that it was lost.

With respect to white wines, Tachis thought well of a blend of Inzolia and Catarratto. Inzolia gave some spice in the nose and had some fatness in the mouth. Catarratto had little to add in the nose and was thin in the mouth but supplied acidity. Tachis believed Grillo had enough body to stand on its own as a monovarietal wine. It could support some barrel maturation and/or aging. He worked with the Piedmontese enologist Carlo Casavecchia at Duca di Salaparuta in the late 1990s and early 2000s on a barrel-fermented Grillo called Kados. For Tachis, 100 percent Carricante from Etna did not have enough aroma. He recommended adding 10 to 15 percent of Traminer or another aromatic variety. He showed an interest in Moscato, in particular Moscato Bianco in southeast Sicily and Zibibbo (Muscat Alexandria) on Pantelleria. As he had done elsewhere in Italy regarding dessert wines, he suggested techniques that would result in cleaner and fresher styles without moving the tastes too far from tradition. He noted that Chardonnay performed well in many locales in Sicily and gave Sicilian winemakers directions on how to barrel-ferment and mature it. In 1993 he entered a Sicilian Chardonnay produced at Virzi in an international competition in Burgundy. It won third prize.

Tachis earned the respect of most Sicilians not only because he was a star enologist but because he showed great respect for Sicily’s history and culture. When the young Sicilian enologist Vincenzo Bambina at Donnafugata asked for his advice, Tachis replied, “To really understand wine, you must be culturally mature.” Tachis believed that the wines of the Mediterranean islands made up a special class that had to be understood on their own terms. He was also an effective communicator. At many conferences he led tutored tastings of Sicilian wines to show their uniqueness to the wine world. His message was that the great natural resource Sicily had was the sun. The sunlight was in the flavor of the wines. He has always been a humble man who never sought credit for what he achieved and always generously bestowed credit on those who worked with enthusiasm, spirit, and professionalism.

Tachis finished his work consulting for the IRVV in 2003. For more than a decade he had given direction to Sicily’s wine evolution at a time when it was ripe to grow. Andrea Franchetti, the owner of the Passopisciaro winery on Etna, once told me that Sicilians are passionate and creative by nature but quarrel constantly among themselves. They need outsiders to arbitrate and to provide a framework for moving forward. Tachis has been the Sicilian wine industry’s most important outsider. He helped to organize and channel Sicilian energy and creativity. Yet at the same time, Sicilian wine producers have to see beyond Tachis’s instruction. He directed them to use their raw materials so that the resulting wines would appeal to the global market’s palate. This was necessary for Sicilian wine to be accepted as something beyond vino da taglio and low-cost vino da pasto. Outside cosmetic winemaking, Nero d’Avola and Nerello Mascalese, Sicily’s two premier vine varieties, have very different appearance and flavor profiles than red Bordeaux or Napa Valley Bordeaux blends. Now that Sicilian wine producers have demonstrated their ability to make international-style wines, the next step is to transform the island’s raw materials into something more faithful to the uniqueness of the Sicilian climate, soil, and gene pool. The challenge for Sicilian wine producers is to successfully market these true Sicilian wines to the world.

THE DE BARTOLI YEARS AT THE IRVV

Diego Planeta’s term as president of the IRVV ended in 1992. In the following year, Marco De Bartoli became president. De Bartoli put more emphasis on the development of indigenous varieties and native wine styles. He advocated setting a maximum yield of one hundred quintals per hectare (8,919 pounds per acre) for all Sicilian wine as a means of controlling quantity and improving quality. He envisioned that much of Sicily’s bulk wine could someday graduate to being sold by the bottle as DOC wine. He advocated promotional activities that would help producers get their wines to market and that would improve the image of Sicilian wines. He criticized the region of Sicily for reducing its financial support of IRVV research activities. Nonetheless, the vinification research center at Virzi continued its operation and Tachis remained a consultant throughout the 1990s.

De Bartoli, however, was not as skilled as Planeta in managing interpersonal and political relationships. In a conference held on the island of Pantelleria in August of 1995, rather than directing debates, be became embroiled in them, in particular arguing with local producers over the extent to which the drying of Zibibbo grapes could diverge from the traditional sun-drying. A producer on the island himself, De Bartoli had his own practices to defend or advocate: a month later he was charged with the illegal adulteration of wines. His winery south of Marsala, including its entire inventory, was sequestered. In 1997 he finished his term as president of the IRVV, but the court action continued and his business nearly collapsed. In June 2000 he was absolved of all charges. To this day, the why and the who behind the accusations remain a mystery. It was emotionally difficult for De Bartoli to put this incident behind him. Planeta’s presidency of the IRVV is well recognized. There is very little written about De Bartoli’s presidency. People who were close to the controversy surrounding him either claim ignorance of the circumstances and people involved or do not want to tell what they know or suspect.

FAMILY WINERIES OF THE 1990S

From about 1995 to 2005, the stage was set for the rapid evolution of private Sicilian companies that offered quality bottled wine to the international market. Many Sicilians owned vineyards and consigned their production to cooperatives or merchants. The success of the Sicilian wine industry encouraged the sons and daughters of these Sicilians to start companies, vinify and bottle their own grapes, and commercialize the wine. These companies emerged with a family management model. They took their positions among a smaller number of wineries that were established during or before the 1980s. Examples of these are Alessandro di Camporeale, Barbera, Fondo Antico, Rizzuto-Guccione, Morgante, Valle dell’Acate, Di Prima, and Giuseppe Russo. All grew at different rates and in different ways during the heady boom days of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Firriato and Cusumano, established in the mid-1980s and mid-1960s respectively, are examples of large family companies that grew rapidly during the 1990s by relying on skillfully branded products. They buy in grapes as needed to expand their brands. Spadafora and Feudo Montoni, which evolved out of family estates, use only estate grapes, and their proprietors remain physically involved in all aspects of wine production and sale. Because family-owned-and-managed wineries tend to engage in longer-term planning than partnerships and publicly owned companies, their presence improves the stability and long-term growth of the Sicilian wine industry. With respect to wine companies, Sicilians rarely engage in business partnerships exemplified by COS and Feotto dello Jato. During this rapid growth period of the Sicilian quality wine industry, three family wineries emerged as the cornerstones: Planeta, Tasca d’Almerita, and Donnafugata.

PLANETA: SICILIAN METEOR

Diego Planeta’s entrepreneurial genius, combined with the experience he had gained as the president of Settesoli and the president of the IRVV, put him in the perfect position to create a private winery that represented the interests and engaged the talents of his family. His connections to Settesoli helped to make him aware of the latest technologies and business strategies. His presidency of the IRVV put him at the helm of an organization that had funded advanced but fundamental research in the fields of viticulture, enology, and marketing.

A half-hour drive from Settesoli, his family owned a fortified baglio (“farmhouse”) in a contrada called Ulmo. It had been a summer home where the family managed the harvesting of its wheat. In 1985, Planeta, with Scienza as his viticultural consultant, had vineyards planted there. Initially their grapes were conferred to Settesoli. The new plantings incorporated the most up-to-date viticultural technology available for producing high-quality-wine grapes. The Planeta vineyards thus became the research center for the future Planeta winery. Along with native varieties such as Nero d’Avola and Grecanico, Planeta had French varieties planted there.

The enologist Carlo Corino, on his arrival in Sicily in 1989, began working simultaneously for Planeta and Settesoli. In 1991 Planeta sent his nephew Alessio to work at the COS winery to prepare him to manage the family winery. In 1994 Alessio returned to the Planeta family winery project. The Planetas built a winery at Ulmo in 1995. Diego’s daughter, Francesca, then joined her cousin Alessio. While Alessio learned about vinification under the wing of Corino, Francesca focused on marketing and public relations. Alessio’s brother Santi joined the team at a later date, taking over the direction of Planeta in the Italian market. Six cousins now work at the winery in different capacities. Alessio, as winemaker and production director, appears to be the leader among them. But although Diego is not involved in day-to-day matters, his word is the final one.

Planeta’s first release, in 1995, was a 1994 barrel-fermented Chardonnay that immediately grabbed the attention of the media. The winery also became known for its Merlot. The Planeta winery quickly became the best expression of the innovation and internationalization that characterized the Sicilian premium wine industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Its rapid success, though deliberately and quietly planned for a decade, encouraged other Sicilian producers to believe that they could sell mid-to-high-priced international-style wines to the world market.

TASCA D’ALMERITA: SICILIAN CLASSICISM

From the 1960s, Tasca d’Almerita built itself up slowly and deliberately from a large, well-managed agrarian base. The agrarian skills and instincts of the presiding Tasca d’Almerita family members—Giuseppe at first, then his son Lucio during the 1980s and 1990s—combined with the marketing genius of the winery’s sole marketing and sales agent, Ignazio Miceli (who opened global markets for the wines from Regaleali during the thirty-four-year period from 1963 to 1997), ensured that the world took notice of Tasca d’Almerita. The oldest son of Lucio, Giuseppe, an agronomist by training, entered the business in 1988, accompanying Miceli on his visits to the United States. Giuseppe’s brother, Alberto, joined him alongside Lucio: in 2005, while Lucio remained president, Alberto became Tasca d’Almerita’s CEO and Giuseppe its vice-president. Though Corvo was the first Sicilian wine brand to enter the U.S. market, Regaleali was the first to put Sicily on a label, proudly. The synergy between the Tasca family, Miceli, and the Palermo-born Leonardo LoCascio, the founder of the U.S. importer Winebow, helped shine a positive light on the image of Sicily and its wines.

DONNAFUGATA: SICILIAN STYLE

Donnafugata would not exist but for the entrepreneurial genius of Giacomo Rallo, whose business intuition was apparent when he made the difficult decision to leave his family’s traditional Marsala business in order to embrace the new market for quality wine. In a subtler way, the same statement could be made about his able partner and wife, Gabriella Anca Rallo. She was the force behind early viticultural renovations at her family’s Contessa Entellina estate. This farm is the source of most of Donnafugata’s grapes. Soon after Tachis’s arrival in Sicily as a consultant to the IRVV, the Rallos hired him to consult directly for Donnafugata, which he did until 2000. Like the Tascas and the Planetas, the Rallos carefully groomed their family members to take key roles at Donnafugata. Daughter Josè and son Antonio joined the business in 1990. While Antonio is in charge of production, Josè focuses on marketing and public relations. Donnafugata buys in about 40 percent of its grape needs, a larger share than either Tasca or Planeta buys in. Its brands by image and flavor are less linked to specific terroirs. Donnafugata front labels rarely mention the identities of grape varieties. While its wines are technically excellent, the company has the edge on its friendly rivals Tasca d’Almerita and Planeta in its creative, style-driven marketing, which expresses a confident, fanciful, and jubilant Sicilianness.

“INVADERS” FROM THE NORTH

In the late 1990s three wine investors from northern Italy arrived in Sicily and gave momentum to a wave of investment from the boot of Italy. Most significant was the arrival of Gianni Zonin. The family-run Zonin winery has more acreage of vineyards than any other family-run winery in Italy. It bought a large estate, Feudo Principi di Butera, in the province of Caltanissetta in 1997. Also in that year, Paolo Marzotto from Vicenza in the Veneto bought Baglio di Pianetto in the hills south of Palermo. A year later he invested in a sizable vineyard in the Noto area in southeast Sicily. In 2003, when his state-of-the-art winery at Baglio di Pianetto became operational, he stepped down as the chair of his family’s Santa Margherita winery group in the Veneto. In 1998, Vito Catania, a successful businessman from Milan but Sicilian by ancestry, came to the Vittoria area to start the Gulfi winery.

Italian wine producers were becoming aware of Sicily’s potential. It could produce ready-to-drink red wines in styles that would appeal to wine critics and the public. Furthermore, these wines could be made at a low enough cost and great enough volume to compete with the onslaught of New World wines on the world market. The feeling in the air was invest or be left behind. In 1999, Gruppo Italiano Vini (GIV), the largest wine company in Italy, entered into a joint venture with the de la Gatinais family of Rapitalà. The Gruppo Cooperativo Mezzacorona, a large cooperative from Trento, created the wine estate Feudo Arancio in 2001 by buying extensive vineyards and building a winery in Sambuca di Sicilia near Menfi. In 2002 the sparkling wine specialist Fratelli Gancia from Piedmont gave birth to the Capocroce brand after buying land and planting vineyards at Borgata Castellazzo in the township of Trapani. Two Tuscan producers with high-quality profiles made smaller targeted investments. Antonio Moretti, an entrepreneur and the owner of the Tuscan estate La Tenuta Sette Ponti, bought vineyards and started the Maccari winery in 2000 in the Noto area. Closer to the city of Noto, in 2003 Filippo Mazzei of Fonterutoli in Tuscany purchased a baglio in the contrada of Zisola, giving that name to the new wine estate. After 2000, most of the new investment interest moved to the Etna area and was on a much smaller scale. Andrea Franchetti from Rome began the Passopisciaro winery on Etna in 2000. The Florentine Marco de Grazia founded Tenuta delle Terre Nere in 2003. Roberto Silva and Silvia Maestrelli from Milan and Federico Curtaz from Valle d’Aosta created Fessina in 2007. Beyond these investments in the Etna area, there have been few from outside Sicily since the early 2000s.

VARIETAL CHOICES OF THE 1990S

During the late 1980s and the 1990s, interest in red wines grew, and there was a marked increase in the number available on the international market. A prestige category developed. Wines in this category competed on the world stage of public opinion. Usually that stage was the pages of magazines printed in Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, and other countries with sizable wine markets. Such international publications favorably reviewed red wines that smelled of toasted new oak and were deep in color, alcoholic, and soft textured. Following Tachis’s prescriptions, Sicilian winemakers produced red varietal wines using well-known international varieties or blends of Nero d’Avola with those varieties.

No Sicilian red variety besides Nero d’Avola has risen to international market acceptance. Though Nerello Mascalese–dominant red wines are gaining attention, the reputation of the variety remains in the shadow of Etna and its appellation. Syrah is plentiful in Sicily, but it has not been associated with Sicilian wine. The images of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot were stronger in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Now the popularity of these two varieties is on the wane. Frappato is gaining recognition, but too little is planted for it to become popular on the international market.

No one indigenous white variety became the calling card for Sicily. Inzolia, Catarratto, Grillo, Grecanico, and Chardonnay varietal wines and blends vied in the marketplace. Sicilian producers planted Chardonnay nearly everywhere on the island from 1985 to 2000. With the exception of only the hottest of climates, where the skins were subject to burning, Chardonnay made wines that combined richness on the mouth with moderate acidity. At the prestige level, barrel-fermented Chardonnay became the means by which Sicilian producers distinguished themselves on the Italian and international stages. By 2005 the focus on Chardonnay, particularly barrel-fermented Chardonnay, had begun to wane as tastes moved to other varieties and unoaked wine. Sweet wines, such as Moscato di Pantelleria and Malvasia di Lipari, a category in which Sicily had historically excelled, remain niche products.

THE RISE OF SICILIA IGT

An Italian wine law passed in 1992, Law 164, among its many provisions created the IGT (indicazione geografica tipica) category of wines. Higher legal yield limits and the possibility of sourcing grapes or wines from large areas enabled wines labeled IGT to cost less than those labeled DOC. IGT wines could be vintage dated and display a variety name as long as that variety was allowed by IGT regulations and constituted at least 85 percent of the blend. A Sicily-wide IGT, Sicilia IGT, was created in 1995. By the end of the 1990s, Sicilia IGT wines, many featuring Nero d’Avola, increasingly dominated the sold-by-the-bottle market. As of 2008 more than 25 percent of all Sicilian wine, bulk and otherwise, was bottled at the IGT level, and Sicilia IGT was and remains by far the largest category of Sicilian bottled wine. In fact, in most instances, Sicilian producers who could register and label their wines as DOC prefer to use the Sicilia IGT category instead because it gives them more flexibility in all aspects of production. Existing regulations allow the bottling of Sicilia IGT wines on the mainland of Italy. Northern Italian merchants have become the principal bottlers of Sicilian wine, much to the irritation of Sicilian producers.

SICILIA DOC

As of October 2011, Italy’s national commission that assesses proposals for legal wine designations (under the auspices of the Ministry of Agricultural and Forestry Affairs) has approved a new islandwide Sicilia DOC. Large Sicilian wineries have championed this development. They assert that the rock-bottom prices and low quality of Sicilia IGT wines, particularly those bottled on the mainland, are degrading the image of Sicilian wine. Only 20 percent of Sicilian wine production is bottled on Sicily. A lot of wine leaving the island in bulk ends up being bottled and sold by mainland bottlers under the Sicilia IGT designation. No one seems to know exactly how much. Sicilians suspect that mainland bottlers not only use illegal blending to construct their Sicilia IGT wines but also illegally blend Sicilian wine into their other Italian appellation wines. The fact that mainland producers are making money by selling Sicilian wine awakens the mistrust of Sicilians, who feel that over the millennia outsiders have misused the island’s natural resources and agricultural products.

The stricter DOC regulations of the new law place greater quality and identity controls over a portion of the wine that has been bottled as Sicilia IGT. It is also expected that this DOC will better position Sicily to consolidate EU, national, and regional funding behind the new appellation. As originally proposed by the established Sicilian wineries, besides Sicilian producers who met the qualifications, only those mainland bottlers of Sicilian bulk wine who had sold it as IGT wine for three years prior to the enactment of the DOC rules would be allowed to use the Sicilia DOC label, provided that they adhered to the new, stricter regulations. But something funny happened on the way to the forum! The final version of the Sicilia DOC disciplinare (“regulation”) approved in Rome conspicuously does not prohibit or restrict off-island bottling of Sicilia DOC wines. In addition, the Italian government accepted a Sicilian proposal for a new islandwide IGT called Terre Siciliane that replaces the former Sicilia IGT.

Sicily would have been better served by a new DOC that strictly required all such wines to be bottled in Sicily. Off-island bottlers should only have been allowed the possibility of using the new Terre Siciliane IGT. In this way, producers who were bottling Sicilia IGT wine under specific brand names could have continued using those brand names but under the new IGT. This would not have damaged the image of such brands in the eyes of consumers. In addition, Sicilian cooperatives would have continued to have a ready market for their bulk wines. Even prior to the adoption of the final Sicilia DOC discipline, many producers making DOC wines within Sicily were opposed to it because they did not want to share the acronym DOC and its associated prestige with large wineries, whether in Sicily or on the mainland. The implementation of the new DOC and IGT designations will apply to wines of the 2012 harvest. Consumers likely will not see Sicilia DOC or Terre Siciliane IGT on labels until after April 2013.

ETNA ERUPTS!

The massive volcano, its unusual climates and soils, and the elegant, refined Etna Rosso wines have given Sicily its most convincing tastes of terroir. Etna wines veer away from international stereotypes. They are unique. But comparisons of Etna red wines to Burgundy or Barolo and Etna white wines to Alsace help us to understand their character.

Before 2000, the wines of Etna, save for those of exceptional producers such as Barone di Villagrande, have largely been discounted because of their low quality. As of 1988, Giuseppe Benanti, a businessman from Catania, resolved to make a fine wine from the grapes of his family’s vineyards on the slopes of Etna. He focused on indigenous varieties, particularly Nerello Mascalese for the red wines and Carricante for the whites. His Carricante-dominated Pietramarina captured the attention of the Italian wine scene. Salvo Foti, whose grandfather had vineyards on the slopes of Etna, was Benanti’s pioneering enologist until the close of 2011. Foti brought with him a love of the mountain and a respect for the Etna culture of family production. He also wrote about the history of Etna, helping to provide a foundation for the explosion of interest in it that was to come.

But as has been so often the case in Sicily, it was two non-Sicilians, Marc de Grazia and Andrea Franchetti, who brought the wines of Etna to the attention of the world. American by birth, Tuscan by origin and current habitation, the longtime wine agent de Grazia had a knowledge of the wines of the world and the world wine market. He pollinated the concept that Etna could be understood in terms of Burgundy. The red “Burgundy” of Sicily, however, did not feature the grape that Tachis had felt would make great wine from Etna, Pinot Noir. It featured the native Nerello Mascalese. Curious about the potential of Etna since the early 1990s, de Grazia had visited the area often and made some prototype vinifications before releasing his first commercial vintage, the 2002 Tenuta delle Terre Nere Guardiola, named for the contrada of origin on the north side of Etna. In 2004 he moved into his own facility. Franchetti, from Rome, also had a U.S. connection. As well as being born there, he had spent time in the United States in the 1980s developing a wine distribution company, which he eventually sold before returning to Italy. He set up his own wine estate, Trinoro, in Tuscany during the 1990s. For many years he had visited eastern Sicily on holiday. In 2000 he bought vineyards in the village of Passopisciaro on the north side of Etna. Passopisciaro became the name of the winery he built there. He first made wine in 2000 from grapes he purchased from farmers on the mountain. Franchetti, a frequent visitor to Bordeaux, initially overlooked the potential of Nerello Mascalese, believing that his favorite variety, Petit Verdot—in his own words, “a prince of a grape”—outclassed it. After making several vintages of Nerello Mascalese side by side with Petit Verdot, he realized that although his Petit Verdot–based Franchetti was a thick, tactile wine in the image of Bordeaux, his Nerello showed uncommon elegance, finesse, and Sicilianness. In 2008 Franchetti created, organized, and financed an event at his estate called Le Contrade dell’Etna. He invited all Etna producers, as well as journalists from Italy and abroad. Le Contrade dell’Etna has showcased the wines of nearly all Etna producers every year since.

De Grazia and Franchetti were essential in getting the message of Etna out to the world, but Frank Cornelissen, a former wine trader from Belgium, has also helped ignite interest. Since 2000, when he first visited Etna, he has tantalized both locals and wine cognoscenti with his boldly intuitive artisanal wines. His first vintage was the 2001.

BACK TO SICILY: INDIGENOUS VARIETIES

The success of Etna wines has helped convince the Sicilian wine community that it should focus more on indigenous varieties. Demands from journalists and the trade for indigenous varietal wines are also driving this change. Through regional and state-owned cloning companies such as the Vivaio Governativo di Viti Americane “F. Paulsen,” experimental wineries at Milazzo and Noto, and the Istituto di Patologia Vegetale at the University of Catania, Sicily has been a pioneer in developing hybrids of Vitis vinifera and American vine species that are viable rootstocks for phylloxera-infested soils.

Historically, Sicily has not conducted much research in developing the gene pool of its indigenous vines. In 2003, however, under the auspices of the region of Sicily’s Department of Agriculture and Forestry, the then-director Dario Cartabellotta assembled a group of agronomists and enologists to study a wide assortment of biotypes of both well-known and largely ignored autochthonous varieties under the project name Development of Autochthonous Sicilian Varieties (Valorizzazione dei Vitigni Autoctoni Siciliani). He developed a collaboration between the University of Milan and the University of Palermo and selected Attilio Scienza, Rosario Di Lorenzo, and Marina Barba to head the research team. Cartabellotta also spearheaded the funding of a state-of the-art research facility in Marsala (Centro per l’innovazione della filiera vitivinicola “E. Del Giudice”) to serve as the program’s center. After developing a comprehensive profile of individual vine varieties and their different biotypes, including assessing their growing habits and microvinifications, the research team will select the most useful ones for eventual distribution to nurseries and grape farmers. (Nurseries will propagate and make available to the wine industry budwood from clones of such native vines, grafted onto appropriate rootstocks.) With hundreds of presumptive varieties or biotypes, about fifty recently discovered individual vines with unusual characteristics, and several thousand individual vines under observation at hundreds of locations, this study could move Sicily forward to improve and recover what it can of its patrimony of native vines before unique historic varieties and biotypes are lost.

ASSOVINI: A DYNAMIC QUALITY WINE LOBBY OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Assovini, founded in 1998, is a dynamic marketing and lobbying organization of about sixty-five highly visible Sicilian wineries. It pressed politicians to push forward the Sicilia DOC. In 2010 it applied for and won EU matching funds for seven projects that promote Sicilian wines in overseas markets (Switzerland, Canada, Japan, the United States, Russia, China, and Brazil). It organizes promotional events for its members, such as “Sicilia en Primeur,” which draws journalists to Sicily from around the world to taste the wines of the most recent vintage and those already in commerce. Of the original nine founders, only Tasca d’Almerita, Settesoli, and Donnafugata remain. Giacomo Rallo was Assovini’s first president, in 1998. He was followed by Lucio Tasca d’Almerita and then Diego Planeta, who served from 2008 to 2011. In 2011 Antonio Rallo, a son of Giacomo Rallo, became the new president. The naming of Antonio Rallo, in his forties, symbolizes the generational change occurring in Sicily and, perhaps more importantly, the continuing powerful role of his family, along with the Tascas and the Planetas.

FORWARD TO THE PAST

From 1995 to 2010, several high-profile Sicilian producers expanded their interests by buying vineyards in historic wine zones. The wines they then created highlighted those zones, their histories, and the associated indigenous grapes. The two principal protagonists were Planeta and Tasca d’Almerita. Planeta has a policy of vinifying and bottling in each area where it owns vineyards. In 1997 it moved beyond its birthplace in Sambuca di Sicilia near Menfi and developed vineyards and a winery on land that it already owned in Vittoria. It now makes a best-selling Cerasuolo di Vittoria. A year later Planeta purchased vineyards in Noto, then built a winery there, where it makes two historic wines, a Nero d’Avola (Santa Cecilia) and a Moscato di Noto. In 2010 it released a 2009 Carricante white wine from vineyards on Etna that it had purchased and planted several years before. Moreover, it has secured a long-term lease on a site just outside the city of Milazzo on the northeast coast, where it plans to bring new life to the ancient Roman cru of Mamertino. Mamertino is a DOC, but the existing producers do not have the dynamism or capital to develop the appellation. Planeta plans to build wineries both on Etna and in Milazzo.

Tasca d’Almerita is the other winery reaching into historic sites, from its base at Regaleali in Vallelunga in the center of Sicily. It bought five hectares (twelve acres) of vineyards on the island of Salina in the Aeolian Islands, where it makes a sweet white wine, Capofaro. Though not labeled a Malvasia delle Lipari DOC, this is very similar in style to one. Tasca d’Almerita plans to build a winery on Salina. The company has also purchased vineyards on Etna to make Tascante, an Etna Rosso DOC. It vinifies the grapes from Sallier de la Tour, an estate in Camporeale, and markets the resulting wines. It also has an agreement to buy grapes grown on the island of Mozia, near Marsala. Mozia was once a major seaport of the Phoenicians. Tasca d’Almerita’s Mozia wine features the island’s Grillo grapes.

Other wineries that have made similar expansions into historic areas during this period are Firriato, Duca di Salaparuta, Gulfi, and Benanti. Donnafugata launched its Pantelleria project in 1989 and built a winery on the island in 2002.

THE MODERN IRVV

Senator Calogero Mannino, an ex–agricultural minister and a Christian Democrat, had recommended both Diego Planeta and Marco De Bartoli as president of the IRVV. In 1997 Leonardo Agueci took De Bartoli’s place as president and Elio Marzullo assumed the role of director. They provided continuity and stable leadership until 2003. From 2003 to 2006, political upheavals left the IRVV without a president or a director general. In that vacuum, an administrator simply kept the agency in operation. In 2009 Dario Cartabellotta became the director, working under Agueci, who had returned as president. In November 2011, the Istituto Regionale Vini e Oli di Sicilia (IRVOS) was created to take the place of the IRVV and to promote Sicilian olive oil. Cartabellotta is its director general. IRVOS has continued the IRVV’s research, principally on viticultural and vinification techniques. It sets up conferences promoting the Sicilian wine industry and manages the Sicily Pavilion at Vinitaly in Verona, the Italian wine trade’s largest annual fair. It has also taken on a task previously performed by chambers of commerce, conducting checks to ensure that farmers and wine producers are following appellation laws. This involves inspecting vineyards and wineries, sometimes unannounced, and analytically and sensorially examining wines.

Since the dissolution of the Christian Democratic Party in 1994, waves of new parties, each bearing their own squad of politicians, have entered and left the national and Sicilian regional government within the span of a year or two. In this political climate, appointees such as Cartabellotta must be politically agile in order to survive. He has adroitly moved between Sicily’s Department of Agriculture and Forestry, the IRVV, and now IRVOS. With eloquence, enthusiasm, and boyish charm, he displays knowledge of Sicily’s complex history, culture, and wine industry. Sicilians rarely rally around one of their own. But Sicilian wine producers and technicians rally around Cartabellotta. Will he spark another great era, like the one that Diego Planeta brought to the Sicilian wine industry of the early 1990s?

THE MARKET SITUATION CIRCA 2010

The producers who attend Vinitaly want to show their wines to Italian and foreign buyers so they can maintain old business relationships and make new ones. Having a booth there is synonymous with being a player, though some smaller fairs that focus on specifics markets, such as the ones for organic wines, also attract a number of serious producers. There are many costs beyond those of having a booth, such as travel and lodging. Attendance at Vinitaly is expensive and therefore a useful indicator of the health of the Italian wine industry. Twenty-four Sicilian producers participated in the 1986 Vinitaly. By 1991 their number had swelled to fifty-three; by 2001, 102; and by 2009, 232. In 2010, for the first time, the number of Sicilian producers at Vinitaly dropped, to 180. Vinitaly 2011 had 168 Sicilian producers. At the 2012 fair, IRVOS listed 199 Sicilian exhibitors. Despite this improvement on paper over 2011, one end of the pavilion had some vacant areas.

The years 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 were difficult for the Sicilian wine industry. The word crisis peppered the conversations of many producers. From 1996 to 2000 the market was growing so rapidly that producers had little problem finding buyers for their wines. Then the increasing number of producers and their brands began to make the prospects for many new market entrants more difficult. Growth continued but slowed after the U.S. market plunged in March 2000 and after September 11, 2001. New York City restaurants are important showcases for Italian wines. The World Trade Center devastation had a chilling effect on restaurant dining in the city. Moreover, it led many Americans to immediately curtail overseas air travel. Soon after the attacks, the value of the euro increased, particularly against the U.S. dollar, making Italian wines more expensive to many countries outside the EU.

The Sicilian wine industry, however, continued to grow, but at a slower rate than before 2000. It was the banking crisis of September 2008 that made it regress. Consumer demand for high-cost Sicilian wines decreased. Overseas importers intensified their search for value and identified Sicilian producers’ ex-cellar prices as targets for hard-nosed haggling. Many reduced the number of producers they carried. From 1995 to 2008, many Sicilian wine producers secured loans from banks. The later that loans were secured during this period, the more difficult it was to make timely repayments. Start-ups that included new vineyard plantings were most at risk. In such cases, it usually takes at least seven years before income can be realized. Italian banks suddenly tightened their lending policies after September 2008 and, in an attempt to have more cash on hand, sought to restrict the credit that they had extended to wine producers or foreclose on related collateral. Sicilian wine producers’ principal response was to curtail investments. They also lowered prices, made less wine, stopped investing in their vineyards and wineries, and cut down on staffing. Importers of Sicilian wines also had financial problems. Many delayed payments to Sicilian suppliers or simply never paid. Some went out of business. Fortunately, the growing Asian and other developing markets for Italian wine are offsetting the sagging Western markets.

The present quality wine market crisis should be seen in the context of a structural problem that cannot be fixed easily. Small landholders grow the grapes that make up 80 percent of the volume of Sicilian wine. Most sell their harvests to cooperative wineries. The other 20 percent mainly comes from a small number of large, privately owned Sicilian wine companies that each produce more than one million bottles annually. There are few midsize or small companies. Unfortunately, a few large, private companies seem to have benefited the most from the Sicilian quality wine revolution of the 1990s. The Italian economy has been weakening, and total Italian wine consumption has been decreasing gradually. Large Sicilian producers who were able to establish dependable relationships with importers in growing export markets are in the best position to profit.

In the first decade of the new millennium, the importance of marketing began to overwhelm individual opportunity. While the midsection of the Sicilian wine industry has not developed, the bottom segment may be heading toward what looks like a cliff. What can be done with the excess Sicilian bulk wine produced annually, nearly all of which moves through the cooperative system? European taxpayers in the past have paid to destroy such excess wine production by distillation, extirpation, and vendemmia verde. Such strategies have put tens of thousands of farmers, as well as thousands of workers in connected industries, on life-support systems. There have been some encouraging signs that Sicily is moving forward to address these structural challenges. First, Sicily’s total vineyard surface area has declined by 29,653 hectares (73,274 acres) or 21 percent in the ten-year period from 2001 to 2011. Second, for the 2012 vintage Sicily did not request a vendemmia verde contribution from the EU.

Will the Sicilian wine industry downsize enough before the road paved with subsidies comes to an end? EU policies that have kept these vineyards in existence are increasingly diminishing. For instance, the crisis distillation scheme is scheduled to be phased out at the end of the 2012–13 season. Will thousands of grape farmers and workers at cooperative wineries adjust quickly enough? Or will they all be swept away, leaving families without incomes or work, fields of untended vines and weeds, and ruined, vacated wineries? My greatest fear is that Sicilians’ collective Achilles’s heel—their reluctance to collaborate and coordinate—will reassert its power and allow this bountiful land to fall into the hands of a few, perhaps even investors from outside. And Sicily’s cycling domination of a few over the many will continue. May Sicilians protect their patrimony and make their own future!