Azienda Agricola Palari, Faro on Sale

Azienda Agricola Palari, Faro

Where Sicily is concerned, the first thing on everyone’s minds these days is wine from Mount Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano. But just to the east, in the scrubby hills overlooking the Strait of Messina, is the tiny appellation of Faro—home to architect/gentleman farmer Salvatore Geraci, whose Palari wines became international sensations well before most of their cousins up on the Etna volcano. Based on the same indigenous Sicilian grapes—Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Mascalese—and grown in similarly volcanic soils, Palari’s Faro was not only a trailblazing “Burgundian” style of Sicilian red wine but a wine which, when it debuted in 1990, effectively rescued an ancient wine-production zone from oblivion. 

Even today, Faro is one of the smallest—if not the smallest—officially delimited wine appellations in Italy, with about 15 hectares of vines in total and only a handful of producers. Geraci’s small cellar is housed in a spectacular 18th century villa perched in the hills of Santo Stefano di Briga, overlooking Messina and the Mediterranean. The vineyards, spilling somewhat haphazardly down steep, terraced slopes and consisting mostly of gnarled, bush-trained alberelli (“little trees”) don’t look like they produce very much, and there aren’t a lot of them: His holdings in the zone total around five hectares. In addition to Nerello Mascalese, which has now catapulted to international fame, the mix in these old vineyards also includes Mascalese’s sidekick, Nerello Cappuccio, as well as an even-lesser-known assortment including Nocera, Acitana, and several others.

Geraci, a native of Messina who’d gained renown as an architect specializing in large-scale restorations, inherited the property that would become Palari from his grandfather. His first focus was on restoring the villa, but he was also a wine aficionado whose friendship with legendary Italian wine writer Luigi Veronelli prompted him to invest in the vineyards as well. With the help of his agronomist brother, Giampiero, and Piedmontese consulting enologist Donato Lanati, he created a cult classic that has stood the test of time.

Geraci has no ‘set’ aging regimen for his flagship Faro DOC bottling. Crafted predominantly from Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio, with smaller percentages of Nocera and several other local varieties, Palari Faro is aged in French oak barriques and tonneaux for an extended period that changes from vintage to vintage, followed by at least 18 months in bottle before release. Geraci and team are constantly revisiting the wines to determine when they are ready, so to have a 2009 in the market as the “current” vintage is not unusual.

In the glass, the wine is a deep garnet red with hints of black at the core and brick at the rim. The nose is an assertive mix of wild red and black berries, blood orange, black cherry, leaf tobacco, damp underbrush, grilled herbs, and a whiff of smoke. Medium-bodied and now quite silky and refined on the palate, it is indeed Burgundian in personality, but with a warmer, riper fruit component—it smells and tastes Mediterranean but has the kind of lift and freshness typically associated with cooler-climate reds. Now with some age, intriguing “secondary” notes of leather, hazelnut, and dried rose petal are starting to emerge; it is ready to drink now and over the next few years, blossoming nicely after about 30 minutes in a decanter. Serve at 60-65 degrees in Burgundy stems and pair it with a piquant Sicilian-style swordfish preparation.