Long pieces from the cellar on Via Gibilmanna — wine, country life, the people who grow it, and the occasional small humiliation.
How to taste Sicilian wine without pretending, what the countryside actually asks of you, and how to make soap from a plant that grows in the cracks of a wall.
There is a moment, roughly forty seconds into any wine tasting, when a person decides who they are going to be. This is a guide to not becoming the other thing — and to actually noticing what is in the glass.
Read the piece →Authentic labels, small producers and grapes that carry a territory — from Etna to the lands of Frappato and Nero d’Avola.
Read the piece →Lavico, Sentiero del Vento and Passo delle Mule, with Olio Lorenzo alongside.
Read the piece →A private session, no need to drive, and some of the finest wines Sicily has to offer.
Read the piece →An hour of stories with Antonio Campagna, and a glass of Glera to go with them.
Read the piece →The Marsala producer poured his own wines in Cefalù — fresh mineral whites through to the Marsala tradition.
Read the piece →Etna Bianco, Grillo and Nero d’Avola poured side by side — three grapes, three very different corners of the island.
Read the piece →Four amari side by side, and why knowing which one you like changes what you order after dinner.
Read the piece →Sicilian red covers more ground than its reputation suggests. An evening lining them up.
Read the piece →The pale, perfumed one among Sicily’s reds — a whole evening on a single grape.
Read the piece →Rive di San Pietro di Barbozza, Cuvée di Boj and Cuvée 1926 — a useful counterweight to a Sicilian shelf.
Read the piece →Three or four wines from one estate in a row tell you what the house actually believes about wine.
Read the piece →Six desserts, each matched to a wine from the cellar, with Little Italian Kitchen.
Read the piece →Wine as the base rather than the whole drink — a different way of enjoying it.
Read the piece →An evening with Vorwerk, where the wine bar half of the shop earns its keep.
Read the piece →You no longer need to open a bottle every time you want a decent glass.
Read the piece →Mixed cases of six or twelve brought to your villa or apartment in Cefalù — same day if you order by noon.
Read the piece →The same long table and the same guided tasting — findable before you arrive.
Read the piece →Four stories about the place we live in: a cathedral built out of a shipwreck that probably never happened, a fisherman with opinions, and the exact week the town stops performing for anyone.
Read the piece →The fantasy involves lemon trees and a long table. The reality involves a water tank, a man named Turi who may or may not exist, and learning that August is not a month but a weather event.
Read the piece →A genuine cold-process recipe with olive oil from the hills behind Cefalù, wrapped around the story of the first four batches, which were not soap so much as an expensive, fragrant apology.
Read the piece →My grandmother kept one bottle for eleven years and drank it on a Tuesday for no reason at all. This is that story, and a poem for the grape that taught Sicily how to be patient.
Read the piece →Everything written here started as a conversation across the tasting table. Book a seat at the cellar in Cefalù and we will finish the argument in person.
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