Mount Etna’s Agricola Sofia only came to fruition because of a rainy day in Northern Italy in early 2018. I was in Barolo and the forecast was showing heavy rain, so I packed up the rental car with my wife and child and started driving south. Over the next three days, we cruised through Liguria, Tuscany, Basilicata, and Calabria before loading up on a ferry and landing on the fabled island of Sicily. From there, we met with some all-time classic producers—most notably Benanti, Romeo del Catello, Graci, and Murgo—all of whom implored us to visit a covert hotspot for winemakers on the north side of Mount Etna. We went for lunch and discovered a rustic trattoria with a small walk-in cellar that seemingly held every cult label in the entire world; it’s places like these where you discover the best local insider information. 

So, I struck up a conversation with the sommelier and asked if he knew of any up-and-coming producers. He immediately lit up and said there was one: Carmelo Sofia, and his first “publicly available” vintage was still in the barrel. Suffice it to say, my attention was grabbed. He offered to make a call in order to see if they could swing by...I kid you not, less than ten minutes later, Carmelo’s sister and wife walked in the door equipped with a number of their freshly bottled barrel samples—and they were indescribably delicious. The next day, we visited the vineyard with the entire family, drank some wine, and struck up a direct-import deal. 

“Gioacchino” is named after Carmelo’s father, who grew up in a farming household and spent the majority of his years in volcanic vineyards clinging to Mount Etna. He inherited his first acre of vines in 1980 and, inch by inch, built up his holdings to seven acres. Throughout this time grapes were sold to local producers or vinified and exclusively distributed amongst locals. It wasn’t until 2017, that his son Carmelo decided to declare the official inaugural vintage for Agricola Sofia. 

Still scattered with abandoned vineyards and lava flows, the classic Etna image is one of gnarled, old, bush-trained vines known as alberelli. Vineyard altitudes on the volcano reach up to 1,000 meters (700 for today’s vineyard) making it some of the highest-elevation viticulture in Europe and the only ‘cool’ region of Sicily, which otherwise has more in common with North Africa than much of mainland Italy when it comes to climate. 

On Mount Etna, contrada is the local word for cru and today’s “Gioacchino” is sourced from their 60-year-old, volcanic-soil parcel within contrada Piano dei Daini. Carmelo and his father farm organically/naturally in the vineyard and their small crop of Carricante, plus a few other local varieties, were harvested by hand on September 17th. The grapes were then shuttled to a family friend’s winery in the neighboring province of Solicchiata, where they were de-stemmed. After a two-day maceration (in contact with the grape skins), the juice was transferred into large, neutral tonneaux where a natural fermentation occurred. The resulting wine matured in these tonneaux for four months, followed by a whopping 15 in stainless steel. 

And yet, despite 20+ months of total maturation, Sofia’s 2017 “Gioacchino” Bianco demands at least 30 minutes of air before consumption. Seriously, this wine is incredibly dynamic from minute one to 30 and one taste proves it. At first, it is tightly coiled with tart, citrusy notes but as you allow it to open up, it morphs into one dazzling, extremely moreish wine. In all-purpose stems around 50 degrees, you’ll uncover plump notes of white peach, bruised pear, Kaffir lime, apple skin, tangerine, wild herbs, salt-preserved lemon, sea spray, crushed volcanic rock, resin, and honeysuckle. It’s dry, mouthwatering, and deeply mineral on the palate, unafraid of offering unique salty/tangy/rocky/wild-fruited textures that can only be found with (brief) skin-contact wines of Mount Etna. To be honest, I have no idea what the distant future holds for this wine—mostly because I’ll be drinking my bottles over the next two years. But I don’t think it’s a stretch to say this will offer an exotically bizarre yet highly enjoyable experience in 2025 and beyond. Cheers!