In all my years of writing about the wine scene on Sicily’s Mount Etna, one thing eluded me: getting into Etna’s most historic winery, with its dramatic, meticulously kept vineyards and its grand 19th-century château. Few have.
Castello Solicchiata nestles on the dry and relatively vineyard-free southwestern slopes of Etna outside of the ancient town of Adrano. In late winter, I was finally granted access to the grounds and a visit inside its bottle cellar by its owner, Baron Arnaldo Spitaleri, whose family has presided over lands in Sicily for centuries.
Unlike almost all Etna wines, which focus on the red Nerello Mascalese and white Carricante varieties, Castello Solicchiata makes three red Bordeaux-style blends and three Pinot Noirs from its magnificent set of terraced, volcanic vineyards that stretch well past 3,200 feet above sea level.
You probably haven’t heard of them, thanks to Spitaleri’s allergy to modern promotion. This might change ever so slightly as distribution has been taken over by Sicily’s family-owned Planeta wine company.
I was accompanied on my visit behind the Castello’s great iron gates by Planeta CEO and winemaker Alessio Planeta. The morning began with Spitaleri, an elegant 63-year-old gentleman, sitting under a great cedar of Lebanon and recounting the family story of his knightly ancestors who came to eastern Sicily and controlled a great portion of it after fighting in the Crusades. In those early centuries, he explained, grapes from all over the Mediterranean region were brought to Etna.
The History of Castello Solicchiata
In the mid-19th century, his great-great-grandfather Baron Felice Spitaleri dreamed of making a great Etna wine and traveled to France’s Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne regions, collecting vines and learning techniques for winemaking and aging.
“He realized that we [Italian grapegrowers in general] didn’t know anything about wine—that we just crushed the grapes and sold the must,” Spitaleri explained. “The French knew how to make wine for conserving and aging, and no one at the time thought those techniques could be applied in Italy.”
Don Felice returned to Etna, studied local soils and planted an array of French and, to a lesser degree, Sicilian grapes. The resulting Etna red and white blends, which mixed French and Sicilian grapes, won awards in international competitions throughout Europe.
Following the example of Bordeaux châteaus that were built as opulent showpieces for their wines, he built his own Castello Solicchiata from a selection of various types of gray-black Etna lavastone in the gothic-like Arab-Norman style. He built a separate cellar for his “Champagne Etna” and a distillery for his “Cognac Etna,” and he brought in Bordeaux enologists.
“He wanted to create this great monument to Etna wine,” Spitaleri said.
This Sicilian fairytale continued right up until the phylloxera blight destroyed the vineyards at dawn of the 20th century. Don Felice’s grandson tried to replant with the first disease-resistant American rootstock but was disappointed by the quality of the fruit. So in 1907, Castello Solicchiata was left abandoned.
It did not produce another bottle of wine for 100 years.
Castello Solicchiata’s New Era
Beginning in the 1990s, Arnaldo Spitaleri, a highly successful Sicilian citrus grower, picked up the mantle again—investing heavily to return his family’s Castello to its former glory. He repaired miles of terrace walls and replanted more than 150 acres of vineyards of low-to-the-ground, head-trained vines planted 32 inches apart in a dense grid.
In the vineyards at more than 2,000 feet above sea level, Spitaleri planted Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. At the highest levels of the estate, he planted Pinot Noir. The vineyards require meticulous handwork, and Spitaleri says he uses no chemical treatments whatsoever, simply cutting the grasses between the vines to keep weeds under control.
“Once you have cultivated citrus,” he said, “vineyards are easy.”
Spitaleri began producing wines with the 2007 vintage. But owing to his private nature, they have remained a secret.
Spitaleri seems not to have been that interested in selling wine. The website warns that entrance “is not permitted to public visitors, not even to business visits.”
As we spoke, to my luck, a light rain began. Spitaleri invited me inside for shelter, through a doorway of an antique, arched-roof, lava-stone structure.
Inside, was one of the most stunning winery sights I’ve seen: the Castello’s bottle-aging cellar, dug into the hillside. It was built like a cathedral, with soaring, pointed arches illuminated by large iron chandeliers.
We walked down a flight of wood stairs to the floor of this cathedral of wine. Extending its full length were antique, wooden storage bays more than 15 feet tall, filled with thousands upon thousands of stacked bottles.
Spitaleri, the winery’s own self-taught winemaker, ages his wines at least four years in barriques and six in bottle before release. The wines need long aging, he says, because the iron- and manganese-rich volcanic soils produce particularly tannic Bordeaux blends.
“They are tannins that need a lot of time,” Spitaleri explained. “For me, a great wine has the ability to improve with time.”
So how do they taste? I can answer that in a word: different.
A Wine Style from Another Time
I have tasted the Castello’s wines on a few occasions, and the night before, Planeta and I tasted all the current releases, from the 2012 and 2014 vintages.
The Bordeaux blends—all dominated by Cabernet Franc—are super-concentrated, but not in a modern way. There is something wild and antique about them, with aromas of eucalyptus and incense. “There are scents like church furniture,” said Planeta. “In old Bordeaux, you find that.”
The three Pinot Noir wines—each from a different vineyard plot—were austerely tannic by modern standards, with some of the same aromas as the Bordeaux blends.
“The wines are so out of fashion, they are fashionable,” quipped Planeta, who sells a modest portion of the Castello’s 35,000-bottle annual production—mostly in Italy and other parts of Europe, where the wines retail for astonishingly reasonable prices of less than $30. He is looking for an American importer.
“The location is precious,” said Planeta after we drove away from the estate. “If [Spitaleri] opened the Castello—even once a year—I could sell all the wine.”
Yet for now, it remains a closed, quirky corner of what is, for me, the world’s most fascinating—at times impenetrable—island.
