developing Modeling
MCQA-This investment banker is now making wines at Mount Etna, Europe’s highest volcano
Brief-Salvino Benanti, Etna’s historic wine producer mingles historic winemaking with modern management style. He gives us the low down on the coveted Sicilian wines, Etna Rosso and Etna Bianco.
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- When Giuseppe Benanti first crafted wines from the foothills of Mount Etna in Sicily, he didn’t envision that one day, Etna wines would garner a stellar worldwide reputation. He aspired to simply emulate the best wines from Piedmont and Burgundy, using indigenous Etnean grapes
- “In the ‘80s and ‘90s, nobody cared about Etna wines, not even the local people,” recalled Salvino Benanti, sitting across me on the expansive dining table at his family estate in Viagrande, Sicily. Guiseppe Benanti died last year, leaving his family legacy and estate in the hands of his twin sons, Salvino and Antonio.
Coffee day
The stone villa, with panoramic views of Mount Etna, Europe’s most active volcano, dates back to the 1700s. This is their hospitality hub, where the Benanti’s guests are received at the majestic grounds and shown to the heritage palmento, an ancient stone building where grapes were crushed in the olden days, before being invited into the newly renovated dining room to taste the wines.
“My father was experimenting at the time”, he continued, detailing how the senior Benanti hedged his bets in the 1980s by developing a portfolio of wines from Etnean and international grapes like chardonnay to appeal to a wider audience. His strategy was to open markets off the back of the hero international grapes and push Etna wines as an add-on.
THE WINE LOWDOWN
Etna wines refer to wines made from native Etnean grapes. Nerello mascale is the main red grape of the region, seconded by its cousin, nerello cappuccio. An Etna rosso could be a 100 per cent nerello mascale or a blend of the two. The wines are light-coloured, deeply mineralic and hauntingly beautiful. An Etna Bianco, on the other hand, is crafted mainly from carricante grape, and in its finest form, it’s a chiselled wine that is energetic and has an herbal, saline finish.
We are on Sicily’s eastern coast, where the 3,368m-high Mount Etna is revered and omnipresent. The grapes grow in a composite of vineyards splayed on the foothills and slopes of Mount Etna, sitting at varied heights between 400m and 1,000m. Soils are a mosaic of decomposed lava collected over thousands of years and change from rocky to sandy based on which vineyard you’re at.
The volcano is active, and its four craters frequently spurt black-grey ash, as recently as July 2024, over the vineyards and nearby town of Catania, covering them in lapilli, a micro conical and porous pomace-like sand. Rich in mineral components like silica, iron, magnesium and potassium, the ash enriches the existing soils and creates variations that lend to differences in terroir.
“It is difficult to say how the soil changes after every eruption,” Salvino explained. “Eruptions are so frequent and are so much a part of our everyday life that we do not really analyse them in detail every time. What the volcano usually spills are ashes and sand.”
The quality is attributed to the richer soils and the microclimate of the eastern slopes of Etna, where vineyards (terraced with dry lava stone to combat soil erosion) benefit from cool breezes of the Ionian Sea, which brings salinity of the wines.
Today, Etna Rosso and Etna Bianco feature on every progressive wine list, spurred by a global interest in native Italian grapes and volcanic wines.
The region has even attracted the attention of heavy weight Piedmont (Barolo) producers like Angela Gaia to its slopes. “People who raise the bar and attract the attention of wine lovers are definitely welcome. They are adding value to the region, so we're happy,” he said, intensely aware that the investment from known producers like Gaia, Planeta, Donnafugata has invariably resulted in increased land prices.
