{"id":192,"date":"2016-03-01T02:58:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T02:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=192"},"modified":"2016-03-01T18:03:48","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T18:03:48","slug":"donnafugata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=192","title":{"rendered":"Donnafugata"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wine tasting in Sicily is unlike other places we have been, even in Italy.\u00a0 For one thing, there is no essential place to go to, no Medoc or Napa or Tuscany.\u00a0 The Sicilians grow grapes and make wine almost everywhere on the island.\u00a0 For another, unless you are a real specialist in Italian wines, you probably haven\u2019t heard of any of the better wines made in Sicily.\u00a0 Finally, most of the Sicilian wines available in the US, until recently, were either overly acidic or overly sweet, so there\u2019s not a lot of incentive to find the wineries and taste what they have to offer.<\/p>\n

Donnafugata, in the town of Marsala on the west coast of Sicily, can really change your thinking about Sicilian wines.<\/p>\n

\"20150917_105512\"<\/a>The Donnafugata winery facilities<\/em><\/p>\n

The name of the winery is taken from the great Sicilian novel, Il Gattepardo<\/em> by Giuseppe di Lampedusa.\u00a0 It means \u201cthe fleeing woman\u201d in Italian and in that language the word does roll off the tongue. \u00a0However, to American ears, particularly ears that are near Brooklyn, it sounds so much like the dismissive \u201cfuggedaboutit<\/em>\u201d that is attributed to that borough.\u00a0 Try to overcome this prejudice when you visit Marsala.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the town is not close to other tourist destinations, such as Palermo, Agrigento, Syracuse or Taormina.\u00a0 That means a visit to Marsala entails a long drive, fortunately over well-constructed and well-marked highways.\u00a0 The town itself isn\u2019t much to see and the wineries for the most part look like factories from the outside.\u00a0 Ah, but it\u2019s what\u2019s inside that counts.<\/p>\n

At Donnafugata, there is no bar as such for you to just step up to and taste.\u00a0 You take a brief tour through what is, indeed, a factory \u2013 as all wineries are to a great extent.\u00a0 You learn about the Rallo family that owns and runs Donnafugata and get a pretty good overview of Sicilian grapes and winemaking techniques.\u00a0 We found the selection of wines to be very interesting, with Nero d\u2019Avola as the primary red grape but with several quality wines that add Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.\u00a0 Whites are from a broad selection of grapes, mostly unknown outside of Sicily, such as Catarratto, Grillo, Zibbibo and Ansonica.\u00a0 They do have several Chardonnays just like back home.<\/p>\n

Your tour guide offers you a tasting in a small room, little more than an office.\u00a0 Our guide was a fellow named Marco, who was very enthusiastic and eager to please.\u00a0 He would have opened every wine they make if we had allowed him to do so.<\/p>\n

\"20150917_120436<\/a>Marco getting ready to serve<\/em><\/p>\n

One of our great discoveries was the dessert wine called Passito.\u00a0 It is made from Zibbibo grapes on the island of Pantelleria, closer to Tunisia than to Italy.\u00a0 It is made by placing a large portion of the harvest on cloths in the fields, in order to turn the grapes into raisins.\u00a0 The remaining grapes are vinified and then passed over (hence, Passito<\/em>) the raisins and allowed to macerate.\u00a0 The result can be exceptionally sweet but if managed well, made into a complex, aromatic dessert wine that is, as the Italians say, uno vino de meditazione<\/em>, a meditation wine.\u00a0 Donnafugata\u2019s Passito is called Ben Ry\u00e9, or \u201cson of the wind\u201d in Arabic.<\/p>\n

If you intend to visit Donnafugata, be certain to make a reservation and give yourself plenty of time to get there.\u00a0 Like all of Italy, they close for a leisurely lunch, which means that if you are driving from afar, you don\u2019t have a lot of time to visit multiple wineries in the area and still get back to your hotel before dark.\u00a0 (The highways are fine but the streets in the towns and cities are a bit of a challenge.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wine tasting in Sicily is unlike other places we have been, even in Italy.\u00a0 For one thing, there is no essential place to go to, no Medoc or Napa or Tuscany.\u00a0 The Sicilians grow grapes and make wine almost everywhere on the island.\u00a0 For another, unless you are a real specialist in Italian wines, you … Continue reading Donnafugata<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}