A new winery! By new winery I mean one of the oldest wineries on Sicily, but new for us. Now that I have you thoroughly confused lets talk about wine! haha. Its been a while since we did a winery tour and the timing couldn’t be better. Spring has started to show itself and we are getting sporadic sunny and 70 days. Luckily we hit one of the good days for this tasting. Also this time we had a good group of friends that joined us. I randomly threw the idea out there a couple weeks ago and everyone else must have been feeling the itch as well because we ended up being 21 strong!! Look out… 21 Americans & Sicilians climbing Mt. Etna to a winery for a fun filled wino day. Sounds like a movie plot or something… Well maybe just a short film.. 😎
Patria winery is about an hour drive from Aci Castello. The climb up the mountain is a great experience with awesome views all around you. I should rephrase that… its a great experience for everyone except for the driver. Because as the driver you want to see all the views and sights, but your only view is usually your rear view mirror as you watch a local Italian attempt to basically attach his car to your rear bumper. 😕
Claudia was our guide at Patria winery and she did a great job of herding us all around the different areas. The areas included all the usual barrel rooms, wine lab, and bottling room. Patria does have some uniqueness with an outdoor ampitheater and actual volcanic lava rock walls in the cellars. The tour was great, but we were all ready for some vino & lunch!!
They had a big table setup for us and the menu was solid Siciliano. Overall it was a great experience with everyone. The food was great and I took a bunch of pictures below. I especially liked the Pasta all Norma that they made us. I’ve had a lot of Pasta alla Normas out here, but this was in the top 3. We also had 5 different wines throughout the meal that were paired logically. We also started out with the Brut that they make, which was very good. The wines didn’t knock my socks off, but I did have some favorites in the bunch. We had their: Nero d’Avola, Etna Rosso, Cabernet, Etna Bianco, and their vintage 2001 Etna Rosso. The Nero d’Avola and the 2001 bottle were my favorites of the bunch, while I was also surprised by the Bianco. If you like super super dry wines you should try their Etna Rosso… its probably the dryest wine that I have had on the island thus far…. Holy cow was it dry! Jess and I have a saying that we got from her brother…”feels like the wine put a sweater on my tongue” 🙂
Im going to try to keep the winery tours going. There are so many wineries on this island that we could keep pretty occupied for a while. No winery will go undiscovered!! Watch out the Americani are coming.
Link to the Patria wine website: http://www.vinipatria.it/defaultEng.asp
Awesome pictures! I loved the pasta alla norma too, mos def in my top 3 as well. Jess – your MJ pose rocks my socks off.
Indeed Veronica. Im not sure how they make eggplant in tomato sauce so good. Have you tried making it at home?
Great Blog Nick… We should go to Relais Santa Anastasia, Abazia for our next winery visit.
Thanks John. Those sound good to me! Have you been to either of those? I haven’t.
Just realized you were talking about one place! Im still in 😎
Love the group photo at the end!
Mamma mia Nick! This article totally remind me the good lunch we had. The taste of pasta came back to my mouth while I’m reading it!
Glad it brought back good memories. We will have to do this again soon. Any wineries that you want to try in particular? 😎
A week ago I was in Catania and while having dinner at the Steak House we were introduced to one of the finest wines we tasted during our holiday. In the wine line up further up it is shown in the third position from the left.
During the rest of the holiday we stopped at every wine shop we met asking for this wine but to no avail. Even after asking at other restaurants we always got the same answer that they do not stock it.
Now we are wondering it by any chance you have an agent/distributor in Malta.
If you do it would be a pleasure to know who he is so that we can stock out wine bars with this wonderful wine.
Sorry for the delayed response Victor, Im glad you enjoyed some Etna Rosso! Im sorry but I dont know a distributor in Malta. I seem to remember the folks at Patria saying that they distribute around the world… even the middle east! Maybe I should start exporting these great wines myself! If you can’t find that one I have other recommendations that I find even better. For instance Tenuta delle Terre Nere, Passopiciaro, and Benanti are my top 3 favs.