I love the Italian language, especially the words that aren’t easily translatable—like
sprezzatura, my favorite. Sprezzatura is a kind of “studied nonchalance,” most especially in dress, a way of looking artful without seeming as though you gave it much thought. When I first laid eyes on Salvatore Geraci’s gnarled, old, tumble-down vineyards in the hills of eastern-most Sicily, I was witnessing nature’s take on
sprezzatura. This was about 20 years ago, before the modern wine revolution on neighboring Mount Etna began in earnest, so Palari’s Faro and its less-expensive sibling, today’s “Rosso del Soprano,” were revolutionary wines.
They were more finessed, more aromatically complex, more ‘Burgundian’ than the richer, darker, denser reds from Nero d’Avola that were popular at the time. Palari wines have since become benchmarks, and are still some of the only examples to be found from the ancient, if extraordinarily small, Faro DOC zone. Located in scrubby hills overlooking Messina and the strait separating Sicily from the Italian mainland, Palari is a ‘boutique’ winery if ever there was one, housed in a restored 18th century villa and squeezing tiny quantities of exquisite wine from the twisted old trunks Geraci inherited from his grandfather. Palari is as much an art project as it is a commercial winemaking operation, so wines are released when they are deemed ready—which results in us having a well-aged 2013 to share with the SommSelect faithful. Put it up against the best of Etna, and the best of Burgundy while you’re at it: “Rosso del Soprano” means “red from the heights” and it is true to its name, effortlessly hitting the aromatic high notes that distinguish Sicily’s Nerello Mascalese grape. If you haven’t already gathered, I’m extra excited about this one—it should not be missed!
The Faro DOC is a tiny speck of an appellation in the northeast corner of Sicily. It is so named for a lighthouse (faro) that overlooks the Strait of Messina and had been all but abandoned before Geraci began producing wines carrying the designation in 1990. Geraci, a Messina native who’d gained renown as an architect specializing in large-scale restorations, inherited the property that would become Palari from his grandfather. His first focus was on restoring the villa, but he was also a wine aficionado whose friendship with the late, legendary Italian wine writer Luigi Veronelli prompted him to invest in the vineyards as well. With the help of his agronomist brother, Giampiero, and Piedmontese consulting enologist Donato Lanati, he created a cult classic based on Nerello Mascalese long before any of Etna’s reds really caught fire (he’s now got his own project up on Etna as well, based around a choice plot of old vines purchased from a famous Sicilian folk singer).
Even today, Faro is one of the smallest—if not the smallest—officially delimited wine appellations in Italy, with about 15 hectares of vines in total and only a handful of producers. The soils are predominantly volcanic in composition, and the mix of grape varieties in the Palari vineyards is similar to what would be found on Mount Etna: Nerello Mascalese is the lead singer, with Nerello Cappuccio, Nocera, and other more-obscure local varieties rounding out the blend.
As Ian Cauble mentioned when we offered Palari’s Faro DOC bottling, Geraci has no ‘set’ aging regimen for his wines—although Rosso del Soprano is designed to be released, and consumed, earlier than the Faro. It is aged in a mix of new and used French oak barrels for about a year and then for eight months in bottle before release, but of course this one has spent considerably more time in bottle on top of that, lending it incredible symmetry, silken texture, and an incredibly complex aromatic profile. In the glass, it shines a medium garnet-red moving to pink/orange at the rim, with perfumed aromas of red currant, Bing cherry, blood orange, hibiscus tea, warm spices, underbrush, and dark soil. It is medium-bodied and nicely saturated with fruity goodness on the palate, but while this would surely qualify as a “hot-climate” wine, its freshness and tension is remarkable—no ‘cooked’ flavors or sappy extract weighing it down! It is right in its sweet spot for enjoying now and over the next few years, so I’d recommend pulling some corks as soon as possible: Give it a 15-minute decant, serve it at 60 degrees in Burgundy stems, and head straight for the Sicilian section of your favorite Italian cookbook. This one is sure to wow you, whether you’re an Italian wine geek or not. Enjoy!
