A Hundred Years Wrapped in Etna’s Fiery Embrace

 Mapping the Life and Soul of a Wine Born from Fire and Time

 "A fascinating wine showing flower stems, orange peel and bark with some dried mushrooms. The structure and length are exceptional with a medium to full body and tight, focused tannins. Ends with a persistent, polished and refined finish. Caresses in every sense. Better in five years but if you get the chance to drink now, go for it!" 98/100

So wrote James Suckling in 2024 about the 2022 Terre Nere Etna Rosso 'Prephylloxera' La Vigna di Don Peppino/ Caldera Sottana

Last week, a few of us friends gathered for a long, laughter-filled luncheon—one of those radiant affairs where time bends, stories sprawl, and the corks keep popping. Among the bottles opened that day, one stood out—not just for what it was, but for what it promised to become.

The 2022 Terre Nere Etna Rosso 'Prephylloxera' La Vigna di Don Peppino is a wine forged in fire—literally, born on the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna, where ancient vines dig deep into ashen soil. It inspired something more than just notes and ratings. It begged for a myth.

So I decided to trace this wine’s imagined evolution over a hundred years—through time, memory, and metamorphosis.

To help, I enlisted my clandestine consigliere, ÅïΩfonso—an arcane ignis fatuus who whispers tweaks, nudges metaphors, and occasionally channels the Ancient Greeks. ÅïΩf claims to see the long arc of a wine’s soul. I'm simply the relayable messenger.

Who better to guide such a journey than Empedocles, the 5th-century B.C. Greco-Sicilian philosopher-poet who believed all matter arose from the eternal dance of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water—and who famously dove into the molten mouth of Etna in a bid for godhood.

Examining Cultural Appropriation in Italian-Inspired Cuisine: A Closer Look

Recently, I read an article in the local paper about a chef who opened an Italian-styled restaurant and the food they are serving. One dish on the antipasti list was a late addition after the chef tried a rosé vinegar and decided it had to be incorporated. The result was Prosciutto e Melone made with Texas cantaloupe, culatello (an Italian cured ham similar to prosciutto but from a different cut and aged differently), lightly candied hazelnuts, figs, and basil. The dish is dressed simply with olive oil and the lightly sweet rosé vinegar.

The chef noted ironically, “We have a lot more of what people consider traditional Italian,” but also admitted, “we couldn’t skip the opportunity to put chicken parmesan on the menu.”

Whispers from the Forgotten Frontiers of Italian Wine

Beneath the surface of Italian winemaking lies a shadowed realm—wines yet unborn, enigmatic and silent, waiting in the dark to rise and unravel all we think we know. In the hushed, forgotten corners of the vineyards, these unborn wines murmur secrets—shifting shapes and fleeting shadows of flavors unseen, poised to rewrite the story in ways only the future dares to hold. Ghosts of flavor and form haunt the folds of Italy’s land—phantoms of vintages never made, whispering cryptic truths from a future that may forever keep their true essence shrouded in mystery. Nowhere is this more hauntingly evident than in the Etna zone, where thousands of ancient indigenous vines lie dormant along forgotten hillsides—silent remnants of a time when Sicily’s wine trade pulsed with a vibrant, restless energy—now faded into memory.

Go to Rome, go to Florence, go to Venice, but please don’t go here!

When people travel to Italy, they go to Rome, to Florence, to Venice, to the Amalfi Coast, maybe even now to Sicily, thanks to the White Lotus. But in Rome, many rarely get around to digging into the Lazio region, which could take a lifetime to explore. Tuscany, yes, the wine trails there are established and finely tuned to squeeze every last Euro out of the tourist pocket. Venice, to some the Disneyland of Italy, also has long figured out how to capitalize on their place in Italy. Rarely does a tourist in Venice take a short hop to Treviso, which is like a mini-Venice without the hordes of tourists. Or Valdobbiadene, where Prosecco land flowers forth with exuberant beauty. Oh yes, now folks venture to Etna, and to Alba, Montalcino and Verona. But Liguria? Why in Heaven’s name would anyone go there? Oh yes, to hike the Cinque Terre. But Cinque Terre is but the tip of iceberg. Liguria is one of Italy’s best kept secrets.

What Photography Taught Me About Wine Appreciation

It’s no secret to regular readers of On The Wine Trail in Italy that I have a slight obsession with photography. One hint is that, for years, most of the photographs on this blog have come out of one or another of my cameras. I am a visual thinker, and photography is my compass in navigating life’s path. How’s that for a well-worn cliché? Nonetheless, it’s true. I love everything about photography. And I realize it has informed my wine journey from the get-go. So, let’s dive in.

Devotion, Direction and Dissent – The Divergent Mantra of Contemporary Italian Winemakers

It is an onerous task spotting the minor changes in societal shifts, when one is living in the present. By pulling back focus and envisioning a larger swatch of time, it’s easier to see. With most things, change takes place in incremental doses. In this way, winemaking in Italy has evolved. And along with that, the philosophies and direction in which the winemakers view their oenological palate going forward. We have seen a revolution in winemaking for 80 years in Italy, why would anyone think it would stop here?

Distilling it down into three areas - Devotion, Direction and Dissent - let’s dive in.

Trebbiano and Chicken - A simple meal which might just save the world

During the week, I banged out a piece, which upon reading and trying to edit it into a more peaceful position, decided to let it sit. It’s August, it’s hot. The world is burning up. What good would another screed be?

So, I went into the kitchen and took my knives to some skin-on, bone-in chicken breasts. With the oven preheating at 325°F, and the outside approaching 100°F, I took off my shirt. And put on a cooking apron, the one I got from Petra winery in Tuscany. I love that grease-stained smock. It’s army green and has seen a lot of skirmishes in this kitchen. The cats started to come around, for they have long sensed that when someone is in the kitchen hustling about, there might be treats in it for them. They are well fed. They could be Roman street cats.

Love - Wine Appreciation's Secret Sauce

Perusing the sites where wine writer’s articles are posted and listed, I’ve come to the realization that many of these folks haven’t stepped into a wine shop recently and talked to the actual folks who buy those wines. The disconnect between the sages of the screen and the rank and file, the “little people” who actually complete the cycle as end-users, is significant. Maybe it’s part of the mid-year slump, but to hear it from the overlords of the wine-writing class, the sky has fallen. The scribes on Mt. Olympus don’t appear to be underserved while they constantly harp upon the end of the golden age of wine, what with their endless bloviating on subjects near and dear to them. No surprise wine blogs, podcasts and Substack’s are inconsequential in 2025. “Abba, shpakho - dileitin imon tiel tein.”

“Well, shut my mouth!”

Lately, when I’m out in the world, I keep getting this sense that I had when I was a youngster. Namely, to stop talking and let the adults talk.

I was in my Italian store the other day, straightening up the shelf talkers. A young man was in there and he was looking intently at wines. He’d just passed his WSET level 2. He was so proud he told me three times. Bless his heart! His fiancé (which he told me several times and emphasized w/one “e”)  he reported, was encouraging and also proud of him. “Follow your passion!”  

The Stages of a (Wine’s) Life

Rummaging around my wine closet recently, I realized it was turning into a vinous elder hostel. 25% of the wines were 25 years or older, with the oldest one approaching 89 in the fall. With that, I took a stool and sat down and had a little chat with some of the golden agers. I know, it’s a discarded practice these days to sit at the feet of the ancients and glean for any wit and wisdom. But it was a long, hot summer day outside, and the cool dark room of the wine closet was a refreshing change from the tumult of the external world, these days filled with so much hair-trigger melodrama. I figured I had nothing to lose. Boy, was I in for a jolt.

Haven’t we been here before? A signpost on the wine trail in Italy

As I look over the essays and posts I have written this year, I warily eye the subject matter that appears on this site. I shouldn’t be, I’ve written all of them myself, just as I have been doing for going on 20 years now. But I can’t help wondering if I’ve reached the bottom of the barrel, tapped out, so to speak.

In essence, the jury is still out. I’ve done a bunch of stuff here on the wine trail in Italy. And it has become a repository of images, ideas, and notions that I find myself referring back to more often than I ever imagined I would be doing. So, it has achieved the goal of being a web-log, for my purposes.

As to if it still holds any interest to the thousands of reader who happen upon this site weekly, well that is another question for another day.

David Brooks wrote this column in the New York Times recently, Be Careful About What You Want, in which he ruminates over these five struggles:

• The struggle between craft and reward  

• The struggle between gift love and need love 

• The struggle between excellence and superiority 

• The struggle between high and low desires 

• The struggle between ambition and aspiration

Reading and observing over these almost 20 years (in five months) regarding the wine trade where I worked for 40, those struggles resonate. Not just in work-time but in living a full life. Now that I have the time and luxury of reflection, they impart an urgency that grabs me and shakes me and interrogates me and accuses me. 

And I ask this question: Haven’t we been here before? 

Like Nothing Ever Before

How often have you opened a bottle of wine and thought that you had never tasted anything like what just came out of that bottle in your lifetime? Early on in one’s experience, I imagine one could say that often enough. But after a few years of tasting hundreds, maybe thousands of wines a year, when does that special bottle percolate up to the top and reveal itself to one’s taste buds?

Problem: Wine in Crisis? Remedy: Move forward, like an arrow. Fearlessly.

The past month I have been feverishly working on a project involving Italian wine and how better to communicate its better aspects to consumers, who seem interested but are deluged with a tsunami of wine offerings from Italy. Call it a laboratory, if you will. What it is, is one place in time and space where the progress of Italian wine can be measured, albeit somewhat anecdotally. It is a real place and real people are making buying decisions on the wine they will drink tonight or during the weekend, and any number of situations where wine is called for. And I have good news.

In Service of Italian Wine

Now that I am “retired” I’ve spent some time reflecting on the years I worked in the wine trade. I am glad I survived those years, for I have a list of men and women who didn’t. At first, I thought it was just normal, but as the list grew and grew, I realized I was dodging bullets. Scores of young people, my colleagues, perished in the 40 years I was working. And they were not old people. Time just caught up with them earlier than the rest of us. That said, in reflection, I also realize that there were a few bullets aimed directly at me. How I managed to survive them is the subject of this essay.

That ain’t Italy, folks – Tourism in the 21st Century

The image above was taken from the Instagram site of a hotel I stay at occasionally in Rome. It is their way, I suppose, to offer up a fantasy view of a Rome that is Disney-like in its aspirational tone. While I can appreciate their desire to offer up a vision that will lift people up and take them away to a place where light and joy reigns, my present thoughts about travel digress. While we all need a little escape these days, and we are in the summer months, which for many people, traditionally, is a time for a vacation, this is also a time when many people around the world are suffering, needlessly. To take time “off” from the pressing and urgent problems of our day, seems ill-timed. Add to that, the over-consumption that is designed into today’s tourism industry, and put it in a place like Rome, Venice, or all of Italy, and all of a sudden, a country turns into a cruise ship. The recent events in Venice with the spectacle of a billionaire’s second marriage galvanized this concept into a gigantic, sparkling mess.