​Our plan was a bit questionable, to say the least.  It seemed like a good plan when we’d had a few bottles of wine….  Archimedes had been killed when the Romans took the city of Syracuse, on the island of Sicily.  It was an accident – the Roman soldiers were told not to kill him, but mostly likely they didn’t know what he looked like.  The idea then was to find his time device and send images of Archimedes to the Romans so they would not kill him.  Who knows what he would discover with Roman support?  Of course, we couldn’t send pictures – just images such as the one shown below:

​First problem then was to find his time device.  Our first attempt was by land, starting with the Archimedes museum.  The museum is located on the small island that sits in Syracuse bay, Ortesia.  We found the museum, but could not find any clues there or in the area near the fountain, or the ruins of the Temple of Apollo.

​We returned with our full retinue a few days later.  While some of our group continued to search Ortesia, some of us decided to look for it from the water, taking a boat around the island and into the many sea grottos around the city.  Alas, no sign of a time device.

​Having failed to help Archimedes, we naturally headed out to a winery.  It is, after all, what we do best.  Our intrepid group, now numbering twelve (thirteen if you include our driver) once again headed up the dangerous north slope of Mount Etna, along more narrow mountain roads, to the Gambino Winery.  Gambino winery has been around awhile, and it is worth noting that they are committed to ”organic farming, water conservation, and minimal intervention winemaking.”  I expected another rustic facility, with just a few other visitors.  Instead we found ourselves in a beautiful, new, and very popular winery.

​They also have a great view:

​We were a large group so we did our wine tasting (after a brief tour) in a large room set up for large groups.  Very nice room, indeed, but it had the American restaurant problem of no noise suppression.  Really hard to hear our server over the general din of conversation.
When we sat down at the table in the tasting room we were quite surprised to find boiled eggs.  Turns out that in addition to wine and olive oil, Gambino sells very special salts.  Really good salts.  Oh, and their olive oil is superb.
We tasted several wines.  The most interesting wine was their white Tifeo Bianco.  It is a blend of two white Sicilian grapes – Carricante and Catarrato.  It is a very nice wine.  The red wines we tasted were made from Nerello Mascalese, Nero D’Avola, or a blend thereof.  All were nice, but not particularly noteworthy.

​We were taking a great risk, visiting Planeta Winery.  Planeta has several facilities in Sicily, but we chose to visit the one on the side of Mount Etna.  Mount Etna is an active volcano.  Below is a picture of Taormina, a famous Sicilian resort, taken from the neighboring town of Naxos.  The black rock behind the fence is volcanic, deposited there from Mount Etna in 1669.  Naxos is about 24 miles from Mount Etna, and were going to a winery on the side of the volcano!  Granted, the risk of being killed by a Mount Etna eruption was very small, but it does give me a chance to show some of the pictures I took….

​It is worth noting the Italian system for classifying wines before we discuss Sicilian wines.  The system they use is based on the French system of Appellations.  In Italy, the highest classification is DOCG, similar to the French AOC.  The classification goes to a group of wineries in a specific area – say Barolo – for wines that are made using methods agreed upon by the group, and getting government approval.  Italy actually goes a step further.  The government tastes the wines.  You get the G if your wines are good – basically the government guarantees the quality of the wine.  Only one wine in Sicily has DOCG status. 
The reason is that while they have been growing wine grapes in Sicily for thousands of years, wine making was not very common.  In fact, until recently, 97% of Sicilian grapes were shipped out of Sicily.  Only 3% were used to make wine, and that was primarily low-level table wine.  This is not an easy transition.  If you are growing grapes to make table wines you want high yields.  If you are growing grapes to make quality wines you want low yields to concentrate the flavors in the grapes.  Going from quantity to quality may require replacing the vines, a time-consuming and costly process.
Planeta was one of the leaders of the movement to produce quality wines in Sicily.  They began making wine in 1995, and now have five wineries in different areas of Sicily.  This is pretty much the same time frame as the wine industry development in Southern California.  One great difference is the accessibility of the wineries.  The winery we visited was on the north slope of Mount Etna, quite a drive from the nearest population center, up very narrow winding mountain roads, far less accessible than wineries in our area.

​They started the Etna facility in 2008, taking over a largely-abandoned old winery.  Vines were not in great shape, so they had to replant. By 2012 they had planted the red grape Nerello and the white grape Carricante.  They preserved the old structure, as shown below, along with a picture of the view from the winery:

We started out with a short tour and presentation, then tasting with cheese pairing and more food.

​We tasted wines made from both Carricante and a Nerello variation called Nerello Mascalese, where Mascalese refers to the region where the vineyards are located.  As noted in the picture below, we tasted two wines of each grape variety.  Both grapes were new to me, so it is hard to judge how representative they were.  I found the two whites to be quite nice, but the reds were just ok.  If you are interested, Planeta exports their wines to the United States and are carried in such wine shops as Total Wines & More.

Eventually, we had to leave and head to other venues.  But we got in one picture, with the Planeta server...