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The island of Pantelleria may be part of Italy, but it is much closer to Tunisia than to Sicily, and the Arab influence is strong, especially in the architecture and in the names of the villages. I love islands and Pantelleria is no exception. It is an extraordinary place, quite unlike anywhere else I have visited. We took a 40-minute flight in March from Palermo. Traveling there can be uncertain, for the chief climatic feature of the island is wind, and the runway is on a short exposed plateau, so it is not uncommon for visitors to find their stay prolonged by inclement weather conditions. There may be very little rain, but a cloud tends to form over the island at night, bringing sufficient moisture for vegetation to flourish, notably vines and capers, and in March some beautiful spring flowers. Tourism is the other important aspect of the island's economy with the summer population soaring from 3,000 to 35,000 with an influx of visitors.
Essentially the island is a rocky volcanic outcrop, about 80 kilometers (or 31 miles) square. There are terraced vineyards, with stubby bush vines, each planted in a low hollow, to provide protection from the powerful sirocco wind. Each vineyard is surrounded by a dark wall of lava stone, and often there are wind breaks between the vines; broad beans or bamboo. You sense that the Arab-style houses, the dammusi, with thick gray walls and white-domed roofs, are built to withstand the wind. The olive trees are pruned low too, and the orange trees are protected by walls in a giardino pantesca -- a typical island garden -- a beautiful circular building, with a door, but no roof. Inside, an orange tree is laden with fruit. The coastline is dramatic, with rocky coves and bays -- there are no sandy beaches here. One bay boasts rocks that bear an uncanny resemblance to an elephant's head.
Pioneers in Italian dessert wine
The wind has inevitably determined the characteristics of the island's wines. Moscato, known as zibibbo, is the traditional grape of the island. At one time, grapes were grown here for the table, or to be turned into raisins for cake-making, and a little wine may have been made as an afterthought. That market has disappeared, but various winegrowers from the mainland, that is to say Sicily, realized that there was enormous potential for that peculiarly Italian style of wine, passito, whereby the grapes are dried in order to produce delicious dessert wines.
Donnafugata, the name comes from an association with Giuseppe di Lampedusa's book, "The Leopard," were one of the pioneers, buying their first vineyards on the island in 1989. These are mostly old vines, some over a century old. The soil is very sandy, and packed with minerals, and so there is no problem with phylloxera.
Jose Rallo explained just how tiny the production is. While you may obtain 30 hectoliters per hectare for dry moscato, the yield shrinks to 10 hectoliters per hectare for a passito wine. Essentially one vine will produce one glass of wine. The grapes are picked in mid-August and left to dry outside in the sunshine on bamboo mats for two or three weeks, and then at the beginning of September there is a second harvest and the juice from those grapes is added to that of the first grapes. The fermentation is long and slow and the flavors are rich, with fresh fruit, peaches, apricots and barley sugar. The wine is called, appropriately, Ben Rye, which means the son of the wind in Arabic. They also make a dry moscato, kabir, which has the fresh flavors of the grape.
Others have followed Donnafugata's example. We also went to Abraxas, a small estate set up by Calogero Mannino, one-time minister of agriculture, who fell afoul of the powers that be and came to the island, in exile, as he put it. He explained that you cannot live by passito alone, or indeed moscato alone. So he has planted viognier, and also some red varieties, syrah, grenache and carignan. The viognier was fresh and peachy, and the red wine youthful and tannic, while his moscato passito was unctuous and spicy, with a note of marmalade. It was yet another example of the many original dessert wines of Italy.
Rosemary George was one of the first women to become a Master of Wine in 1979. She has been a freelance wine writer since 1981 and is the author of 11 books. She contributes to various magazines and writes a blog on the Languedoc region.
Photos, from top:
Pantelleria damuso.
Pantelleria damuso with vines.
Credits: Rosemary George
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