Etna wine tours sell the same promise from every hotel desk in Taormina and Catania: a volcano in the morning, a cellar in the afternoon. What changes is the ratio. Some spend two hours on lava fields and pour three glasses at the end; others skip the craters and sit you down in front of … Read more
The best wine resorts in Sicily are spread across an island roughly the size of Vermont, and that is the first thing to plan around. A night on Etna, a baglio above the Marsala salt coast and a lighthouse among Malvasia vines on Salina are three different trips, each a long drive or a ferry … Read more
Sicily wine country is bigger and more varied than most first-time visitors expect: an island roughly the size of Vermont, with a volcano at one end, salt pans and old Marsala cellars at the other, and baroque hill towns in between. Etna gets the headlines, but Vittoria, Noto and the far west make wines just … Read more
Where to stay in Taormina is a question most Etna wine trips eventually ask, because the town on the cliff above the Ionian Sea has the grandest hotels in eastern Sicily and the volcano fills the view from half their terraces. The cellars of the north slope are about an hour away by road. These … Read more
Where to stay on the Etna east and south slopes depends on what you want to see from the window: vineyards, the volcano or the Ionian Sea. This side of the mountain is closer to Catania and the coast than the north, and its towns, from Milo and Zafferana Etnea to Trecastagni and Viagrande, sit … Read more
Where to stay on the Etna north slope is a simpler question than it looks, because almost everything happens in three towns strung along the same road. Castiglione di Sicilia, Linguaglossa and Randazzo sit above the Alcantara valley, with the contrade of Etna’s most talked-about wines between them. These six addresses cover the range, from … Read more
Etna wine resorts are a small and fairly young category on a very old volcano. A handful of estates on the north and east slopes have turned palmenti, farmhouses and aristocratic villas into rooms, and most of them still make wine from the vines outside the window. These six are the ones we would book, … Read more
Etna wine country wraps around the slopes of Europe’s most active volcano, and which side of the mountain you pick decides almost everything about your trip. The north is red-wine territory and the center of the revival that put Etna on American wine lists. The east faces the sea and makes the whites. The south … Read more