Outside a small restaurant in Catania’s fish market, a huge swordfish lay cut in half on a table, which seemed a fair guarantee of what would arrive on my plate. The restaurant was Antica Marina, tucked among the stalls of La Pescheria, and lunch there turned out to be the moment my holiday properly began.
I had gone to Sicily determined to have a real break: to visit friends, eat and drink without analysing everything, and climb Mount Etna. I meant to keep the notebook closed, but this meal was so good, and so simple, that I’ve made an exception.
It also got me thinking about a question every wine lover runs into sooner or later. Why does the wine that tasted wonderful on holiday so often disappoint once you get it home? Part of the answer is time. On holiday you have the hours to sit and enjoy a glass, and a modest wine can win you over because of where you drank it and who you were with. The memory does a good deal of the work.
Sicily had already tested that theory. After a run of thin house wines that could have doubled as salad dressing, I found Passopisciaro’s white 2010, made by Andrea Franchetti on the slopes of Etna, in the place I least expected it. I already knew it was a fine wine, and with the local seafood it was even better. It has a frame of old oak and a saline, savoury character that suited the setting, since the whole restaurant smelt of seawater as the market was hosed down outside. Between the fish, the wine and the salt air, we left feeling as buoyant as if we’d been floating far out at sea.
Franchetti made a wine that belongs to Etna and still holds up away from it, which puts it among the few holiday wines that taste just as good at home. Even so, I’d happily go back to Catania for the swordfish alone.
Archive note: This post dates from my years writing about wine. Andrea Franchetti died in 2021; the Passopisciaro estate continues on Etna.
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