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| Marquiliani “Le Gris de Pauline” Vin de Corse 2024 Sclavos “Alchymiste” Kefalonia 2023 Leccia “Fronda di Leccia” Ile de Beauté 20204 Occhipinti SP68 Rosso Terre Siciliane 2024 Russo “Feudo” Etna Rosso 2020 |
| As you emerge from the ferry from the mainland in Messina, the cityscape feels at once familiar and foreign. Familiar, as you are certainly within the modern boundaries of Italy. Billboards and street signs are in Italian, and really, you’ve only travelled a couple of dozen kilometers from the mainland. But also foreign, too, as the vibe feels palpably not Italian, but it’s hard to put your finger on just why. Road markings are scarce, driving is chaotic (but not as chaotic as what you’ll encounter in Palermo), and you start to hear people speak Sicilian, which is a language that sounds like Italian but is not. The island is a contested place where the Risorgimento is still unfinished business, with thousands of years of successive colonization and contestation. Is the identity pre-Roman tribal, Roman, Muslim, Norman, etc.? The answer is yes. Islands are like that, geographies that are both here and there, then and now, and the wines that are grown on islands reflect this liminal, hybrid identity.
For this week’s tasting, we’re pouring five island wines that explore the heterogeneous identity of the island. We’re starting with a delicate, dry Corsican rosé, made primarily from the Corsican variety sciaccarellu (shock-a-rell), a grape that encapsulates the complex identity of island wine. Today, Corsica is a French territory, but it was an Italian territory for centuries prior. While most of the grapes grown there have genetic connections to those on the Italian mainland, genetic drift over the centuries has produced biotypes that are not quite the same as those found on the Italian mainland. Sciaccarellu is genetically related to the Italian red grape mammolo, a variety that is today mostly found on the Tuscan coast. Sure, the origin of the grape is Italy, but its identity is distinctly French, as this wine bears no resemblance to any Italian wine, and texturally has more in common with a Provencal rosé, though here with a perfume that is uniquely Corsican. Exceptionally pale, it looks as if it was colored with just a few drops of tincture, zero sugar, seductively perfumed—we wait eagerly for it each vintage, as the grower makes just a bit of it, and once it’s gone, it’s gone until the following year. Next, a dry, taut mineral wine from the Greek island of Kefalonia, which itself has undergone an insane number of identity shifts over the past several hundred years, and despite being part of the Cycladic island chain, feels, like Sicily, both a part of its mainland and not. Then, we return to Corsica for a wine that, when we tasted it last month, generated a one-word tasting note for me, “fuck.” To finish, two wines from Sicily. One, a blend of two grapes that are native to the southeastern portion of the island, frappato and nero d’avola, juicy and low in tannin; the other, from the northeast of the island, grown on the basalt slopes of Mt. Etna, is structured yet approachable, a wine that lights up both your brain and viscera. |