Vintage in Acireale (CT) Sicily
 |
Acireale is a nice but big city at the feet of the big and hot volcano ETNA.
Here the wine is good, very good, especially the red one. Red like the fire, hot like the volcano and good like a kid.
As many Italians, also Sicilians love the goodness of products of the earth and this region offers a lot of products that grow very well due its great weather.
A vintage in Sicily is a very felt moment. Many people partecipate to this relaxing but, at the same time, tiresome work. The owner of the vineyard has shown me how many friends help him every year to collect the grapes to produce the red wine called Nerello Mascalese.
In the 1950 this vine was cultivated in provinces of Messina and Catania but after the 1980 it was cultivated in all the rest of Sicily.
 |
 |
The name Mascalese derives from its native land: the plain of Mascali, near Catania since four centuries. This wine is based on a red berry and vigorous grapes. It is of course the most diffused wine in this area of Sicily. Its clusters are big, extended and conic with one or more wings of compact appearance.
This wine matures at the end of September or at the beginning of October.
The vintage normally begins very soon in the morning and about twenty people enjoy it. Women, children and men, altogether, wear old clothes and old shoes to work hard in the ground and in the mud.
Everybody works in the assigned piece of vineyard in order to fill their buckets. Children look very happy when they cut the grape and then deliver it to the adults. Later the grapes are throwed in an automatic machine that divides the peels from the fruit. This is the first step of a long long procedure.
 |
What a nice experience
Here the wine is produced for personal use only and not for profit and this is a special and nice occasion to spend one day together eating game, aubergines, peperoni and Sicilian cannoli.