{"id":372,"date":"2016-10-24T15:31:49","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T15:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=372"},"modified":"2016-10-24T16:07:12","modified_gmt":"2016-10-24T16:07:12","slug":"cantine-pellegrino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=372","title":{"rendered":"Cantine Pellegrino"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wine tasting in Europe, especially in France and Italy, comes with a special advantage \u2013 or perhaps it\u2019s a special problem.\u00a0 Lunch is a deeply respected, perhaps sacred, time of the day and everything except the restaurants closes firmly for two hours, to allow dining and maybe a little siesta.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a visitor to local wineries, you are forced to adapt to their customs and take an extended lunch yourself.\u00a0 Ah, the slow and easy life, replete with fine food, local wines and friendly people!<\/p>\n

The problem is that if you are visiting from afar, you may not have a lot of time to visit wineries in the morning before lunchtime.\u00a0 And then how can you pass up on a bottle of wine with lunch?\u00a0 Depending on which part of Wine Country you are in, you may not recognize any of the labels on the list, so you just choose the most expensive because even that one is cheap compared to what you\u2019d pay for a bottle at home.<\/p>\n

So now it\u2019s 3:00, you may have visited one winery and you\u2019ve tucked away a half a bottle each (assuming you are travelling in a pair, as we always do).\u00a0 And you still have to drive back to where you started the day.\u00a0 Hence, wine tasting in these areas requires a bit of planning and getting up early.\u00a0 Alas, when we went wine tasting in Marsala in Sicily, we neither planned nor set an alarm clock.<\/p>\n

Hence we arrived at Cantine Pellegrino\u2019s tasting room at 12:50, ten minutes before the midday closing. The kind lady serving wine told us that there wasn\u2019t enough time for a tour (which we didn\u2019t want anyway) and she would only have enough time to pour us a few sips of their best wines (which was exactly what we did want).\u00a0 Once she saw how interested we were, she cut 20 minutes into her appointed lunch hour(s) and we really got to know their wines.\u00a0 (In fact, we already knew their Nero d\u2019Avola, which we often order at a nearby restaurant at home.)<\/p>\n

If you plan to visit Marsala, the center of the greatest wine producing region in Italy, get directions to find Cantine Pellegrino (http:\/\/www.carlopellegrino.it\/wines\/en<\/a>).\u00a0 Our GPS system took us near there, but led us to the winery itself, a large industrial building.\u00a0 (Grapes are grown in vineyards; wines are made in factories.)\u00a0 Where you want to go is the tasting room located almost a kilometer away, on the sea front.<\/p>\n

\"pellegrino\"<\/a>Cantine Pellegrino\u2019s Ouverture tasting room\u00a0 (Photo courtesy of Cantine Pellegrino)<\/em><\/p>\n

If your wine tasting experience has been gained mostly in Napa and Sonoma, you\u2019ll feel right at home at Pellegrino.\u00a0 Their tasting room is in a very modern, three-story building that they call Ouverture.\u00a0 Blindingly white in the Sicilian sunshine, it is surrounded on three sides by landscaped walking areas and by the sea on the fourth.\u00a0 As mentioned, the greeting you get is very warm and, well, Italian.<\/p>\n

The wines available for tasting cover a very wide range.\u00a0 The basic red wine is Dinari del Duca (the Duke\u2019s Money), either Nero D\u2019Avola or Syrah.\u00a0 As stated, the Nero D\u2019Avola is exported and widely available in the United States.\u00a0 Their top red wine (and also their top white) is Tripudium, a blend of indigenous and international varieties.\u00a0 They also have an Etna Rosso, from the other side of the island.<\/p>\n

The best part of the wine tasting experience at Cantine Pellegrino are the wines unique to Sicily.\u00a0 Off the main island, actually nearer Tunisia than Italy, is the island of Pantelleria.\u00a0 Here the primary grape grown is zibbibo and it almost exclusively used for the dessert wine called passito<\/em>.\u00a0 Half the harvest is vinified and the rest is left on mats in the fields to become raisins.\u00a0 Then the wine is passed over \u2013 hence, passito \u2013 the raisins, producing an exquisitely sweet product.\u00a0 Be prepared for your server to ask you what the taste reminds you of.\u00a0 (Hint: think apricots)<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the Marsala wine.\u00a0 Sure, you may know the stuff to cook with, but it\u2019s not much to attract the taste buds of a wine lover.\u00a0 At Pellegrino, you have the chance to taste well-aged, vintage Marsalas.\u00a0 The oldest currently available is the 1981.\u00a0 It tastes nothing like any Marsala you may have tasted, more like an Amontillado sherry.<\/p>\n

The town of Marsala is certainly out of the way, but it\u2019s worth a visit.\u00a0 But get there well before lunch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wine tasting in Europe, especially in France and Italy, comes with a special advantage \u2013 or perhaps it\u2019s a special problem.\u00a0 Lunch is a deeply respected, perhaps sacred, time of the day and everything except the restaurants closes firmly for two hours, to allow dining and maybe a little siesta.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a visitor to … Continue reading Cantine Pellegrino<\/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\/372"}],"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=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":398,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions\/398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}