Who, where, what? To Sicily – the Elymians, the Sicani and the Siculi or Sicels are some of the known tribes living at Sicily in prehistoric times, way before the Greeks ever set foot on the island and most probably before the first vines were planted on what would be known as Sicily. Now this is not meant to be a history lesson but… the earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation goes back to circa 8000 BC and then people have come and gone.

To the important stuff, with people comes wine (and eventually #winelovers), in this case the Greeks. They were establishing settlements around 750 BC in different places of Sicily. If they actually brought the vines to Sicily or if it had existed before I don’t know, but it’s around this time it gets visible in the archaeological records.

Next week (2/9) I’ll be sitting on a plane to Sicily, more exactly to the Western part of the island around Marsala and Menfi, with Fermenti Digitali and Regione Sicilia – Istituto Regionale Vini e Oli di Sicilia – read all about it here.

As always you want to prepare for your travels so I’ve been looking into the wineries we’ll visit, to wines I have experience of, wine I would like to try and wines that are available to me in Sweden.

As always it is interesting to try new stuff, but when writing home it’s sometimes good to focus on wines my readers can get their hand on in Sweden. So let’s go to statistics: At the Swedish monopoly are, currently, 73 red wines, 31 white wines, 4 rosé wines from Sicily (I’ve only looked into normal size bottles, 750 ml). The prices vary from 49 to 579 Swedish crowns. (Ca. 5,6 – 66,5 €). This seems quite a lot but in reality only 5 red, 5 white and 1 rosé is available over the counter in the Monoploy stores – the rest are available through the Monopoly via their internet ordering service, in reality the importers storages or what the rest of the world call Internet shops.

That about that! During our visit to Sicily we’ll visit a number of wineries and taste wines from even more.

Wineries on the program:

Caruso & Minini – Have wines in Sweden via Ward Wines

La Cantina “La Divina” – Not currently available in Sweden

Cantine Barbera – Not currently available in Sweden

Planeta, Ulmo Estate – Have wines in Sweden via Philipson Söderberg

Donnafugata, Contessa Entellina estate – Have wines in Sweden via Hjo Grosshandel AB

Ercole Alagna winery – Not currently available in Sweden

Barraco’s “Vignammare” – Not currently available in Sweden

Marco De Bartoli winery – Available via TM Franska kvalitetsviner AB in Sweden

There’s more to come – I’m sure 🙂

Also don’t miss my blogging compadres that will be with me on this trip: Luiz Alberto, Nanci Bergamo, Alex Down, Fabien Laine, Mads Jordansen, Brett Jones, Andre Ribeirinho, Juel Mahoney, Tim Lemke, Noel Pusch, Arnold Waldstein, Paola Tich, Simon Woolf, Elisabetta Tosi and Giampiero Nadali!

Magnus Reuterdahl