Catarratto

Catarratto is the most planted white grape in Sicily and one of the most planted in all of Italy, and for most of its history none of it was drunk as white wine. It was the base of Marsala, the fortified wine of the western end of the island, and later the base of a vast trade in bulk wine shipped north to strengthen thinner blends.

The grape suits that work. It crops heavily, it takes the heat and the drought of western Sicily without complaint, and it ripens to high sugar. There are two main forms, a leaner one called lucido and a fatter one called comune, and the lucido is the one growers now plant when they want a wine rather than a volume.

The turn toward quality came with cooler fermentation and earlier picking, and with growers moving up into the hills around Alcamo and Monreale. Handled that way it gives a dry white of moderate weight with lemon, green melon and a faintly bitter herbal finish. It is rarely thrilling and it is very often good, which is a reasonable outcome for a grape that was written off as filler.