Petersontravels

The second winery we visited in Marsala, Donnafugata, turned out to be a rather large producer, who makes a huge amount of wine from multiple locations in Sicily.

The tour is somewhat commercialized, with plenty of graphics to assist with the telling of their story. This graphic shows where in Sicily their grapes are sourced from, including that island off Tunisia, Pantelleria.

The island of Pantelleria is known for severe weather, including very high winds, so they grow bush vines versus trellised vines. They also dig a hole around the base of the vines as an overall protection against the high winds. I found this very interesting, to the point I’d love to visit this island at some point.

They have a massive barrel room filled with brand new French oak barrels that are mostly being used for their Chardonnay and their red blend, Mille Notte. I’ve never seen that many new barrels in one spot, and this photo only captured about half the room!

In amongst this oak forest of barrels is where we officially met Edgar and Bianca, our new friends from Austria. Edgar and I have been emailing each other pretty much every day since we met here! They come to Sicily every year while their son is on break…one of the joys of living smack dab in the middle of Europe! Hoping we can connect with them on our Germany trip in March/April of next year.

Donnafugata seems to spend a lot of money of labels. Every label is a work of art! In the US, the label pretty much makes the sale for 90% of wine consumers, so this makes sense.

We had a light lunch with our wine pairing, but I gotta say all of the food was cold and appeared to have been sitting there for awhile. Not ideal when you are trying to pair wines with the food! Below is the wine lineup from the tasting.

For me, the best wine in the tasting was the red wine using some of that new oak, Mille Notte, a blend of Nero d’Avola, Petit Verdot and Syrah. It has a very Napa Valley feel to it! I think even my friend Mark Johnson would like it, and he hates everything from Europe!

After the tasting we made our way back to the hotel, only having to back out of a street we entered the wrong way once (I blame Google Maps). Later that evening I braved the narrow streets of Marsala once again for a tour of the local salt flat company, Saline Genna. This is the view of the main Egadi Island across the flats. The little piles of salt in the photo are for show…the salt season is over at this point.

This is where you meet your tour guide. I had booked this 5:00 tour about a month out, and they meant to end the tours at 4:00, but insisted on honoring our ticket time, so we were the only ones on the tour.

The salt flats here started in the 15th century while the area was under Spanish rule. At one point there were windmills here that moved the briney water from one tank to another, but those have long since vanished. Everything in done by pump now.

Here is Kim relaxing as we wait to start our tour.

Our tour guide advised us these large piles of salt represent each rectangular portion of salt flat on the site, which is rather impressive. The salt season harvest starts in early August and runs until early October.

We got a shot us while out on the flats. It was windy and cold!

Our tour coincided with the sunset at 5:15. This is how much planning I do! Gorgeous sunset.

Another view of Egadi Island with the salt flat worker rest house in the foreground. What a great spot for photos!

The salt flats start a ways from where our tour was. They move the salt water from one spot to another to keep increasing the salinity via evaporation, until salt crystals finally form. The bottom of the flats have hard rock so they can then rake the salt up into piles to allow them to evaporate even further. As I said previously, we are out of the salt season, so this photo is from their website.

The sunset as seen from the edge of a huge salt pile on the shore.

One last sunset photo looking across the flats. What a gorgeous spot!

That night at dinner I was surprised to see we had a name tag at our table! That’s service! Unfortunately the food wasn’t as good as the service.

Coming up, we depart Marsala and make our way towards Agrigento, with a stop at the Selinunte Archeological Park to explore Sicily’s largest collection of Greek ruins.

The drive from Erice to Marsala was uneventful, with the exception of nobody stopping at Stop signs.  We made our way into the city center to get to our hotel, and the roadways are VERY narrow here.  There are lots of one-way streets so you have to pay strict attention to what you are doing.  Our hotel, Dome Hotel, advised you could park on the street a few blocks from the hotel, or they would take care of it for you for 30€ a night.  I didn’t see parking anywhere as we drove around, so go with the 30€ a night deal, trust me!!

After checking in we decided to take a walk around the city.  First up was Garibaldi Gate, which was once a part of the ancient city walls.  It was named to commemorate the landing of “Garabaldi and the Thousand” on May 11, 1860.  This was part of the unification of Italy, where a corps of volunteers sailed from near Genoa to Marsala under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi  to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled by the Spanish.

We then walked along the waterfront since the weather was perfect and obviously very clear.  That’s Erice off in the distance, the town we just drove from.

You can also see the Egadi Islands quite clearly from here.  They are supposed to be great for a visit, but we only have so much time!

After getting a snack we continued walking around as the light was quite good.  This is the Marsala Cathedral, originally founded during the Norman era around 1176.

I found the reddish-pink stone in the interior to be quite unique.

The prominent green-tiled roof in this photo is the “Palace of April 7”, so named because of the major patriotic uprising in Marsala (right before Garibaldi’s landing on Mary 11, 1860)) against the ruling Bourbon (Spanish) government.

One of the unique features of our hotel is they have a rooftop area that usually has a bar, but not this time of year.  They do have excellent views of seven different church domes, hence the name “Dome Hotel”.  This dome is from the Marsala Cathedral we visited earlier, with the reddish stone interior.

While this dome is the bell tower from the adjacent Chiesa del Carmine, a church built in the 16th century in Baroque style.  It is no longer a church, now serving as a painting exhibition hall.

It does make for dramatic night time views when it’s all lit up!

We noticed this particular apartment you could see from our hotel roof, and I have to wonder why somebody would need so many fricking antennas??  What in the world are they up to!

That night we had a really good dinner at this place just around the corner from our hotel, La Vineria, that was run by a really cute couple (Benny and Ana) and Benny’s Mother (Mamma Vita, the Chef).  Definitely put this spot on your list if you come to Marsala!  The food and wine were just as good as the hospitality!

The next morning we had two wine tastings that were set up by our Tuscany connection Filippo.  The first winery was Marco De Bartoli, a legendary winery in the Marsala region.  Marco always did things his own way, never listening to those who told him he couldn’t do what he wanted to do.  He is said to be the man who restored dignity to Marsala wine, which was at one point relegated to only useful for cooking.

Marsala was only known for their fortified wine for a long period of time, and De Bartoli wanted to bring back the early days of Marsala winemaking where the wines stood on their own!  He started making natural dry wines and changed the course of winemaking in the region, an art form that had been lost to British intervention (the Brits love their fortified wine and pushed for that production as far back as 1773, much like they did in Porto).

We were met by our guide and taken on a tour of the winery. This is the aging room where all the magic happens….while we wait.  De Bartoli doesn’t use any new oak in any of their wines, it’s strictly neutral oak barrels for aging.

It was interesting to me that nearly every wine Marco makes is from Grillo.  It was hardly used when he started out, but everybody seems to make a Grillo now, as it’s been very common in Sicily.  Here is another shot of the aging area, with amphoras lined up in the background.

They have a large tasting area, which I presume gets quite busy in the summer.

Here is our lineup of wines, including wine that comes from the farthest southern Italian island, Pantelleria, just off the coast of Tunisia.

They were all decent, but the best wine to me was the Vecchio Samperi.  While it looks like a fortified wine, it is not.  The Grillo takes on the color due to being aged for 20 years.  The grapes are picked late which gives them a higher alcohol level (16.5%) and a small amount of residual sugar.

I also liked this wine, which comes from the island of Pantelleria.  This wine obtains it’s light sweetness from combining normal ripened grapes and sun-dried grapes.  Really good!

This post is long enough, so coming up we visit our second Marsala winery as well as some salt flats at sunset!