Sicily's signature red takes its name from the town of Avola, near Syracuse in the island's southeast, though it long travelled under the curious alias "Calabrese". For a century its career was anonymous: dark, strong and generous, it went north in bulk to deepen and warm the paler wines of the continent, a blending grape whose name never appeared on a label.
Since the 1990s it has stood on its own name, and the name has become Sicily's flag. At its best Nero d'Avola joins southern warmth — dark plum, black cherry, sweet spice, a suggestion of carob — to a freshness that surprises, drawn from old alberello vines and from the island's hillside altitudes, where the nights fall cool even in a Sicilian summer.