Wines I'm Drinking: Sicilian Wine Tasting at Traverso's in Santa Rosa (September 24, 2011)

Traverso's in Santa Rosa--one of the North Bay's best places to shop for Italian and other wines--hosts wine tastings in the store on most Saturdays. Today the tasting featured two white wines and three reds (one of which was a dessert wine) from Sicily. I especially enjoyed the 2010 Donnafugato "Anthilia" Sicilia Bianco, a blend of 51% Catarratto with other indigenous grapes, mostly Grillo. It smelled of hazelnuts and tasted of citrus fruits. It had a remarkably fresh balance of crisp acidity and fruity sweetness. Something on the rather long finish reminded me of intensely ripe white nectarines--sour and sweet at the same time. I liked this wine enough to take home a bottle and to go by three grocery stores on the way home to pick up foods that I thought would complement it--raw oysters, prosciutto and pears, mushrooms, truffle-stuffed brie....

I also tasted the 2009 Tasca D'Almerita "Leone" Sicilia Bianco, a white again made mostly of Catarratto, but with 20% Chardonnay--another tasty wine, but without the zip and zing of the Donnafugato wine. The dry reds, also from Donnafugato, were a mainly Nero d'Avola wine with some Cabernet, Merlot, Syrah, and other grapes (the 2009 "Sedara" bottling), a fairly tannic, somewhat rustic offering with an interesting hint of bitterness on the finish, and the "Tancredi" bottling, 70% Nero d'Avola, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, a very nicely balanced, much more sophisticated wine that I enjoyed very much. The tasting finished with the 2007 Donnafugato "Ben Rye" Passito di Pantelleria, a passito wine (wine with raisined grapes added to the fermentation to boost the sugar and alcohol content of the finished wine) from the little island of Pantelleria, off the southwest coast of Sicily, a wine that tasted like bottled apricots. The "Anthilia" wine was excellent with raw oysters, and with the cheeses I bought. These Saturday tastings at Traverso's are well worth attending.

[Update: Traverso's has gone out of business since this was written.]