Deliciousness Orbiting Italy: Planeta Wines From Sicily

Looking back on my posts, I realized that I'm pretty light on Italian wines. That's kind of strange given my profound love for Italy and the emotional connection I have with the place.

Although Spain was my first trip to Europe, Italy was my deepest immersion. I studied there for a semester while I was in college. I lived with an Italian family (who were hosting for the money, not for the love, so I spent a lot time walking the streets of Florence and exploring museums and beautiful places all over the city to avoid hanging out with them), studied the language and the art, and traveled all around the boot, exploring all it had to offer. I've been back a few times, checking out the wines in Tuscany and the Alto Adige, among other things.

I love Italy -- the food, the art, the clothes, the people, the language. MC Ice and I hope to retire there.

But the wine...now that's frustrating for me.

Why? The price vs. quality isn't there, especially in comparison to the other big European wine powerhouses -- France, Spain, and Germany. I know I'll get flak from some of you. You'll say I haven't tried enough stuff or I'm just concentrating on cheap stuff, but I can assure you that I've had loads of Italian wine. And I'm just not feeling it.

It's not for lack of choice in Italian vino -- seas and seas of Italian wine are imported to the US, where I live. Italy is consistently either the first or second largest producer of wine year after year. But the stuff that's available is at extremes -- there's so little middle ground. At the top end ($40+) the wines are fabulous-- super complex, full of interesting flavors, and great with food. At the bottom end, the stuff is like watery, sour grape juice. My issue is that even when I'm willing to spend $20 - $25, often that's not enough to get a high quality wine.

I'm going to be as bold as to suggest that this is the norm for the country (certainly for Tuscany and Piedmont, the historic high quality regions), with one huge exception: Sicily. They're hitting the middle ground running.

A hot place, kind of separate from the rest of the country, and with a culture quite unique from the mainland, Sicily is not the immediate suspect for great wine. And although they've been making wine there since around 1500 BC and making decent stuff since the Greeks landed in about the 8th century AD, in modern times Sicily has made an assload of crap wine through co-ops. The fertile, volcanic soil (Mount Etna is an active volcano) is great for growing lots and lots of flavorless grapes that can be sold in mainland Italy, to beef up wimpier wines from other places. But all that has changed. In the last decade, there are some really interesting things going on in Sicily that are transforming its wine scene.

No change has been this big since the English came in the 1700s and ruled the Marsala trade (Marsala is a wine made from local grapes and then made kind of like Sherry from Spain, where alcohol is added to it to stop fermentation and make the wines high in alcohol and sometimes sweet). But in the 1990s, local talent stepped it up. Leveraging some of the native grapes -- the reds: Nero d'Avola, Frappato, Calabrese and the whites: Cataratto, Grillo, Inzolia, Zibibbo, and Moscato Bianco, and adding French favorites like Syrah, Merlot, and Chardonnay, there is some outstanding wine coming out of Sicily from modern producers who want to write a new chapter in Sicilian wine -- one that's not Marsala or flabby table wine.

One of the most talented producers is the Planeta family. The family had been in farming since the 1600s, but got into wine later on, joining the co-ops and making bulk wine in the 1970s. Things changed when Diego Planeta started the winery in the mid-90s by buying up small, ideal vineyards all around Sicily. He sought to put the island on the wine map and to do that, he played the popularity contest: He made a Chardonnay that he hoped would appeal to the international market and draw attention to Sicily as a quality winemaking region.

The first vintage of Chard was in 1994 and it was a huge success -- landing on Wine Spectator's Top 100 and building enormous momentum for the brand. That enabled the family to branch out and expand the line to include native grapes. Today, Planeta grows classic Sicilian grapes plus Syrah, Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon.

The family owns 6 separate estates, which each make wine on-site, rather than the traditional model of having a mother-ship where all grapes are trucked to a big facility where the wine is made. By having the properties right near the vineyards, the winemakers can specialize and make sure that they can use fresh flavorful fruit (as opposed to picked fruit that's sitting in the back of a truck for hours).

Planeta is dedicated to high quality wine. This collection of, essentially, six boutique wineries across Sicily that fall under the brand contains some everyday wines and their top end is essentially the island's version of the top quality wines of mainland Italy. Each label contains a piece of the Planeta family crest -- a beautiful star-laden shield.

Before I get into the wines, I owe a thanks to Marie of Palm Bay, the company that imports Planeta. She was kind enough to take me on the Planeta odyssey!

Here's the lineup...and my opinion of whether they are worth it.

The Wine: 2008 Planeta Chardonnay (the flagship wine!), $35
Color: This wine was a rich golden color. The warm climate produces ripe fruit with lots of pigment and the oak the wine sat in darkened it too.
Smell: This was a 90s style Chardonnay -- oaky, smoky, and full of pineapple and pear aromas. The wine reminded me of the very "done up" California wines that were popular a few years ago until people got a little sick of the major oak, vanilla, and fruit combo and winemakers started making wines that were a little more subtle.
Taste: This wine tasted like it smelled. It was creamy, smoky, oaky, and full of tropical flavor. The oak didn't linger, the flavor kind of dissipated, and that made it more refreshing than some of those more commercial wines that I associate with oaky Chardonnay.
Drink or sink?: This is a well-made wine, and it's Planeta's flagship but I think it needs to evolve. It's great to stick to your guns and continue to make a wine the same year after year, but in this case, I think the winemaker needs to stop with all the tricks (oak, malolactic fermentation to make the wine creamy). The fruit can't really show what it's got with all that oak from 50% new barrels, and creaminess from malolactic fermentation. I'm not a huge fan. I call this a sink, because I think it's overdone.


The Wine: 2009 Planeta La Segreta Rosso, $12
Made on the southwestern coast of Sicily, this wine is a lighter style blend, inexpensive, and a good representation of some of the native grapes. Super pleasant!
The Blend: 50% Nero d'Avola, 25% Merlot, 20% Syrah, 5% Cabernet Franc (I guess I just revealed la segreta or secret)
Color: Light ruby with a pink rim and transparent. It looked like a nice, refreshing wine but nothing that was going to be too flavorful or bold.
Smell: Really fresh! Raspberry, ripe red cherry fruit smells with some pretty rose petal scents. On a second whiff there was some spice, dried dirt (like kicked-up dirt when you drive on a dirt road), and smoke. It was interesting and not too simple.
Taste: The wine tasted like ripe cherries and had a nice zing of mouthwatering acid. It had a tiny bit of tart, bitterness but there was no sign of tannin and it was simple, light and refreshing.
Drink or sink?: Drink. I love that I have another alternative in the world of light reds now! This is a great summer wine and could probably even take some time in the fridge. What a great value and a great light sipper! If you are just moving from white to red, here's a great transition wine. Score.


The Wine: 2008 Cerasuolo di Vittoria, $20
The Blend: The red blend is the only Sicilian wine that is granted the most restrictive regional designation -- Denominazione di Origine Controllata Guarantita (DOCG). It's required to be 50% - 70% Nero d'Avola and 30% - 50% Frappato. Cerasuolo (chera-SWO-lo), whose name derives from "Cerasa" or Cherry in a local dialect, is made in an area between the sea and the Iblei Mountains/
Color: Another wine that was light in color, this looked like the previous one. I expected another light wine.
Smell: The wine smelled earthy and had a rustic quality, like dried dirt. And oh, the cherries -- it lives up to its name!
Taste: What a surprise! The wine was smoky and tangy, like barbeque potato chips, but combined with cherries, strawberries, and cranberries. It had a little bit of bitterness from the tannin but it also had great mouthwatering acid to keep it light.
Drink or sink?: Drink! This wine was so fresh and light. It was like a Gamay (Beaujolais) but a little bit more rustic, which is a trait I find in a lot of Italian wine and something I like. We had it with sundried tomato and it was a stunner. Another wonderful, light wine but with more complexity. I can see why Planeta is considered a top producer of Cerasuolo.


The Wine: 2007 Santa Cecilia, $35
The grape: 100% Nero d'Avola
Color: Nero, a wonderful native grape of Sicily, has a ton of flavor and is a pretty rich color too. It looked like black cherry juice and had super thick legs from the 14% alcohol.
Smell: Not only does the wine look like black cherry, it tasted like it too! This smelled like a cherry cola -- cherry, vanilla, cinnamon, with a touch of orange flavor.
Taste: Wow! What a cool surprise. This tasted like a Christmas cake! It was full of nutmeg, cinnamon, chocolate, orange, and baked cherry flavors. It had kind of a pine taste and it was full flavored but wasn't too mouthdrying and had great mouthwatering acid. Those warm Christmas-y flavors are mainly from the French oak barrels they use -- those flavors against the wine's fruit was so unique.
Drink or Sink?: Drink. This was excellent. I've had some really bold, fruity Nero d'Avola before but never anything like this. I had no idea that Nero could be like this and I loved it. Amazing.


The Wine: 2005 Burdese (Bordeaux Blend), $35
The blend: 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Cabernet Franc
Color: Garnet with a little bit of browning around the edges from the 7 years of aging, the wine was full of color. It stained the glass, it was so dark, and the legs were super thick from the 14.5% of alcohol.
Smell: This was fruity wine. It smelled like blackberry, plums, and black currant with some violet flowers. It had a nice licorice and black pepper smell to it, but it was just dripping with fruit. It was almost too fruity for me -- there was barely anything else there but fruit, and I like something else to analyze.
Taste: This tasted nothing like it smelled. It was like wet soil and then lavender, Indian food spices, and green peppers. It had a tiny bit of plum flavor, and a good hit of cedar too. The mouthdrying tannins were not too overpowering and there was good mouthwatering acid too.
Drink or Sink?: Drink. Wow, this was a great wine! I was skeptical because I hated the way it smelled, but it was damn good. Nothing like a Bordeaux, but really excellent and unique. A delicious, earthy wine.


The Wine: 2006 Syrah, $35
The grape: 100% Syrah
Color: This wine was dark in color with thick, gloppy legs from the 14.5% alcohol. It looked intense and after the fruity smell of the Burdese, I worried it may be overdone.
Smell: The wine smelled dirty and earthy and a little soapy too. You could smell the alcohol -- a cilia singer. The aroma wasn't like Australian Shiraz (same grape) or like Syrah from the Northern Rhône. It was un-Syrah like -- more dirt-like and less peppery.
Taste: Heavy on the oak -- it tasted like vanilla, spice, and woodchips. It had plum and strawberry flavors, but also very astringent, bitter tannins. It was slightly smoky but mostly the sensation was sweet and bitter competing with one another, and I just didn't love that.
Drink or Sink?: Sink. My least favorite of the tasting, I thought this was a little off balance and lacked all the spicy, fruity, earthy flavors I like in Syrah. I was disappointed.

Quick note: Another of their wines, which we didn't have in the tasting, but which I've had courtesy of Marie another time was their Cometa, made from 100% Fiano, a native white grape, is beyond outstanding. It's around $40 but worth it!

All in all, I think Planeta is an excellent producer and they shine best when working with the grapes that are native to Sicily. Although are some are a little pricey, I encourage you to seek them out and try these gems. They are something completely different, exciting, and delicious!