4 Things to Know Before Going Wine Tasting in Sicily 

Planning a trip to Sicily? For many, the idea of Sicily and wine go hand in hand.

Sicilian wines have gained importance all over the world. If you are headed to Sicily, a day (or five) of wine tasting is a beautiful way to spend your time. Especially for wine lovers, visiting one of the Sicilian wine regions is a must. In this article I talk about 4 things that I learned while being a wine tourist in Sicily, and that I think are important to know before you go wine tasting in Sicily. I aim to help you to have the smoothest wine tasting experience. 

Arriving in Sicily either by air or ferry the island has plenty to explore. I suggest having a car at some point in the adventure, particularly if you are going wine tasting. I drove down from Northern Italy, but you know Sicily is an island, so by car you have a few different ferry crossing options. You can take the 30 minute ferry from Reggio Calabria to Messina, or from Naples (Lazio) to Palermo, or from Genoa (Liguria) to Palermo. The latter two are over night ferries. 

Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the 20 regions of Italy. Home to 5 million people and one of the most active volcanoes in the world, Mount Etna, the island of Sicily is also home unique to arts, music, culture, traditions, landscapes, cities, foods, and wines. The Mediterranean climate and volcanic soils have been cultivated to produce very powerful and unique wines. When in Sicily, you definitely feel Sicily. 

Before going wine tasting in Sicily take into account these 4 things, knowing them will help you enjoy your time getting to know Sicilian wines. 

• You need to book appointments at the wineries you plan to visit. 

While in many parts of Italy things are changing and more wineries are creating tasting rooms and wine tourism is becoming more accessible, it did not seem like Sicily is on this totally on this train yet. I would say it is 100% necessary to book tastings at any wineries you want to go to. There were few wineries with wine shops or tasting rooms open for drop ins.

However, with a tasting appointment the visits were long and thorough, and usually with a full tour of the winery.  The tastings I went to all lasted almost 2 hours, which is not what I expect in most other places of the world. 

The tastings all ranged in the amounts of wines you were trying. They also ranged in price (as they were always paid) and were generally 15-20€. Some tastings gave only 2 wines while others offered 4 or 5. 

• Be very sure to know exactly where you are going. 

Try less to rely on google maps directing you as much as they do in other places. Make sure you have verified the location of the winery, even if google maps finds it, make sure it is actually where the map says it is. Once I arrived at a winery as it was identified on google and it was actually still a kilometre away. In general, I found google maps less reliable for indicting road closures, alternative routes, and durations. Confirm the location! Since you have to book all your tastings, this works out that you can confirm the address/location with the winery while doing so.

• Wines are expensive (or at least more than I thought they would be).

Of course price ranges all across Italy for different wines and in different regions, but compared to mainland Italy I found the average prices much higher than I was expecting. This was also reflected in the price of the tastings, if you pay 15€ for 2 or 3 wines, the wine must cost more. While you can find inexpensive wines at larger wineries for 15-20€ mosts of the wines I tasted tended to range from 20-120€. 

• Allow more time than you think (for everything). 

Allow more time than you think for the tasting and tour, and on top of that more time than google maps says to get there as well. The wine areas are quite spread out in each region so allow yourself the time to get to/between/from them. Unless you really focus on location and pick wineries that are right beside each other, you are probably going to have a longish drive between them. 

I would suggest only to try to do 2 wineries a day, don’t pack your tasting schedule too full or you’ll just end up disappointed. One tasting a day is probably all you really want to do, 2 if you are more serious about it. My usual 3/day was a bit too exhausting to uphold here. The only way around this is really to visit wineries based on their location. Beware of winding mountains, misleading google maps and spread out vineyards. 

So, allow yourself lots of driving time and extra time at the tasting.

Overall the tastings were thorough, in depth, educational, and gave a great idea of wine making styles, information about the winery, history, and their specific regions. 

Sicily is a very beautiful island with so much to offer to the wine world. Sicily deserves much more wine tasting time than the average tourist can give it, so take your time, fill up your glass with their unique wines, and just enjoy being there.