Tenuta delle Terre Nere Moganazzi Etna Rosso 2023
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The Land
Etna's contrada map gets compared to Burgundy's climats so often the comparison has gone soft. What makes it hold is geology: a contrada is a lava flow with a date on it, and vines rooted in ground laid down a thousand years ago behave differently from vines on rock fifty thousand years old. Moganazzi sits in the commune of Castiglione di Sicilia on Etna's north slope, 700 to 750 meters up, on steep hand-built terraces. Loose black volcanic ash over layers of broken stone, medium in depth and fast-draining, comparatively young ground from the mountain's more recent eruptive phase. Castiglione is the largest township on the north face, and Moganazzi has long ranked with Guardiola and Santo Spirito among its best sites. Harvest runs into late October under wide diurnal swings and constant wind across an open slope.
The Wine
100% Nerello Mascalese from 1.5 hectares of head-trained vines 70 to 90 years old, cropped at five tons per hectare. Fermentation is temperature-controlled at 28 to 30 degrees Celsius, malolactic runs spontaneously, and the wine spends 16 to 18 months in French oak barriques and tonneaux plus a final month in steel. Roughly 3,000 bottles a year. Dried red cherry, blood orange peel, crushed violet, wood smoke, iron. Light-footed and taut rather than heavy, with fine chalky tannin, high acidity, and an ash-and-citrus finish. 2023 was a hard year on Etna: cool, wet weather through May and June brought heavy downy mildew pressure and cut volumes sharply across Sicily. That makes this a leaner, higher-toned Etna Rosso than the hot 2022.
The People
Marco de Grazia spent two decades as an exporter before he owned a vine. Marc de Grazia Selections, founded in 1980, built a portfolio of small Italian estates for the American market around indigenous grapes and named sites, and his Piedmont work in the 1980s placed him at the center of the Barolo and Barbaresco producers who reshaped those wines. That background explains Etna. A man who had spent a career explaining Barolo's crus to Americans found a volcano where the crus were already mapped, already named, and almost entirely ignored, and he began bottling them one by one. Tenuta delle Terre Nere was founded in 2002 and farms roughly 43 hectares across the north face, organically in practice: copper-sulfur sprays and animal manure, no synthetic inputs. He bought his first Moganazzi parcel in 2007 and began bottling it under the Terre Nere label with the 2017 harvest.
Food Pairing
Pasta alla Norma, with fried eggplant, tomato, torn basil, and salted ricotta, meets the acidity head-on, and the wine's smoke picks up the fried eggplant. Roast duck breast with a sour-cherry pan sauce works because the tannin is fine enough not to fight the meat. Grilled swordfish with capers, olives, and oregano is the Sicilian answer, and the wine's salinity carries it. Mushroom and taleggio pizza on a Friday night also does the job. Nerello Mascalese is what you reach for when Pinot Noir feels too soft and Nebbiolo too severe, which turns out to be most weeknights.
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Sicily, Italy’s largest island, blends ancient wine traditions with a fresh wave of modern creativity. Its star red grape, Nero d’Avola, thrives in the island’s warm, sun-soaked climate, producing intensely flavored wines with dark fruit and a hint of savory spice. Along the western coast lies the historic heartland of Marsala, a fortified wine prized for both sweet and dry styles. Rising above the island’s varied landscapes is Mount Etna, an active volcano whose mineral-rich soils and cooler elevations result in elegantly structured reds and nuanced whites. From coast to crater, Sicily’s wine culture is as diverse and vibrant as the region itself.
Italy - Sicily
Named for its pale color and hometown of Mascali, Nerello Mascalese is a rising star in the wine world. Indigenous to Mount Etna, it was overlooked for decades until recently the world has taken notice of the elegant yet powerfully minerally wines produced on the volcanic slopes. Think halfway between Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo.
