Sicily’s Mount Etna is a rapidly maturing wine zone, at once a beehive of new investment and an incubator of serious wine talent. It is easily one of the most talked-about terroirs in the modern wine world, and the wines, like today’s eye-popping debut from Famiglia Statella, live up to the hype.
Having recently been introduced to Statella’s Etna Rosso and the story behind it, the comparison that comes to mind is to a highly touted young baseball prospect working his way up to the big leagues: There are certain players you just know are going to be great, and this was the consensus about Calogero Statella as he guided several high-profile wine operations before launching his own small label on Etna. He spent the last decade making wine at Tenuta delle Terre Nere, the now-iconic property on Etna owned by well-known Italian wine agent Marc de Grazia, and that relationship not only informed his winemaking (and farming) but immediately exposed his tiny startup to a worldwide audience. Something tells me, though, that this wine would have found an audience regardless: It is the kind of perfumed, polished, high-toned Etna wine that prompts comparisons to top-tier red Burgundy. We were thrilled to get any at all to offer (only 5,000 bottles were made), as it’s always exciting to feel like you’re getting in on the ground floor of something big. A few years from now, when Statella is a bona-fide wine celebrity, I’ll be proud to say I was an ‘early adopter.’
“Pettinociarelle,” seen on this wine’s front label, is the name of the district in which Statella’s one-hectare (!) ‘cru’ vineyard is located. He and his wife, Rita, purchased the small plot in 2016 and made their first wine from the site that same year. Farmed organically with fanatical attention to detail, this vineyard lay on the Etna equivalent of Burgundy’s Route des Grands Crus—namely, a stretch of high-elevation sites on the volcano’s north slope traversed by the State Route 120. DeGrazia’s Terre Nere estate is nearby, in Randazzo, and other famous wine towns along the route include Rovittello and Passopisciaro.
Before he made it to the pumice-strewn slopes of Etna, Calogero Statella studied at the Istituto San Michele all’Adige, one of Italy’s most highly regarded enology schools, and took a position with the behemoth Mezzacorona Group, whose vast network of wineries included the 20-million-bottle-per-year Feudo Arancio in Sicily. He left Mezzacorona in 2008 to join DeGrazia at Terre Nere, where he was both the agronomist and enologist. Like many of the great young Burgundians to which he will likely be compared, he’s a vigneron (or, should I say, vignaiolo) first and an enologist second.
Today’s 2016 Etna Rosso was vinified in the cellars at Terre Nere and aged about 10 months in used French oak tonneaux; it is comprised of 90% Nerello Mascalese, Etna’s rising-star native grape, and 10% Nerello Cappuccio, both from vines of about 15 years of age at 765 meters’ elevation. The soils, of course, are Etna’s famous black volcanic pumice, and the exposure of the vines is northerly, which, combined with the elevation, lends the wine its genuinely “cool climate” character. There’s great perfume and finesse here; it’s a refreshing and, yes, very ‘Burgundian’ addition to the Etna Rosso category, which certainly has its share of bigger, richer, ‘showier’ styles.
In the glass, Statella’s 2016 is a bright, reflective ruby-red moving to pink at the rim, with a highly perfumed and detailed nose of red and black cherry, red currant, wild strawberry, warm spices, grilled herbs, and underbrush. Medium-bodied and silken-textured, it has the nerve and aromatic lift of well-made Burgundy Pinot Noir but also some of the ‘Mediterranean’ character of the most finessed, Grenache-driven Châteauneufs (i.e. Rayas). It is very plain, on first sip, why there’s so much hype around this first-release wine: there’s a sure hand behind it, without a doubt. I find it delicious and perfectly approachable now; decant it about 30 minutes before serving in Burgundy stems next by go-to Sicilian workhorse,
caponata. Keep the temperature cool (60 degrees) and you’ll experience no greater combination this coming summer. I for one will be breaking it out early and often, and laying some down as well. Cheers!
