Winemaker Notes
The Terre Nere vineyards are located at extremely high altitudes - 2100' to 2900' above sea level. The hot sun, cool breeze and cold nights make Terre Nere wines extraordinarily fine and elegant. A brilliant cohesion of craft, skill and deliciousness!
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
A cool, fresh nose offers aromas of blackberries, black plums, pepper, and earth. Flavors of sweet blackberry jam and warm citrus headline the palate before a dark chocolate ganache element takes over on the finish, lifted by flakes of salt but also reined in by tannins.
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James Suckling
Crushed stones with plums, cherries and just a hint of vanilla and cream on both the nose and palate. Medium-bodied, showing fresh herbs and a touch of flower stems. Chewy tannins, but polished and very drinkable.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Tenuta delle Terre Nere 2024 Etna Rosso includes a touch of Nerello Cappuccio, which is interplanted among the old Nerello Mascalese vines. Marco de Grazia describes 2024 as a baroque vintage: it has everything, but perhaps a little too much. High alcohol, abundant sugar and ripe tannins required careful maceration and extraction to keep the wine from going over the top. The estate faced similarly hot conditions in 2004, its first vintage, and again in the more tannic, “monster” 2014 vintage. Those experiences helped the team manage phenolic ripeness more precisely in 2024, producing tannins that feel silky and smooth.
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Vinous
The 2024 Etna Rosso is a spice bomb on the nose, with a burst of cedar, incense, lavender, dried cherries and blood orange. It's soothingly round, cool-toned and silky in texture with polished red fruits swirling throughout. This finishes gently tannic and long, carrying hints of violet pastille and ripe blackberry.
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Wine Spectator
A perfumed red, with dried lavender and rosemary notes wafting through flavors of pureed raspberry, plum sauce, blood orange peel and clove. Silky in texture, with juicy acidity and light, sandy tannins firming the mineral-laced finish. Drink now through 2033.
Extending across the variable volcanic soils of the slopes of Mt. Etna at some of the highest vineyard altitudes in all of Europe—up to 3,300 feet—Nerello Mascalese is one of Sicily’s most noble red varieties. It makes a beautifully aromatic, firm, cellar-worthy but pale-hued red often comparable to a fine Burgundy or Barbaresco. Somm Secret—Nerello Mascalese takes its name from the black color of its grapes, nerello, and the Mascali plain between Mt. Etna and the coast where it is believed to have originated.
A large, geographically and climatically diverse island, just off the toe of Italy, Sicily has long been recognized for its fortified Marsala wines. But it is also a wonderful source of diverse, high quality red and white wines. Steadily increasing in popularity over the past few decades, Italy’s fourth largest wine-producing region is finally receiving the accolades it deserves and shining in today's global market.
Though most think of the climate here as simply hot and dry, variations on this sun-drenched island range from cool Mediterranean along the coastlines to more extreme in its inland zones. Of particular note are the various microclimates of Europe's largest volcano, Mount Etna, where vineyards grow on drastically steep hillsides and varying aspects to the Ionian Sea. The more noteworthy red and white Sicilian wines that come from the volcanic soils of Mount Etna include Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio (reds) and Carricante (whites). All share a racy streak of minerality and, at their best, bear resemblance to their respective red and white Burgundies.
Nero d’Avola is the most widely planted red variety, and is great either as single varietal bottling or in blends with other indigenous varieties or even with international ones. For example, Nero d'Avola is blended with the lighter and floral, Frappato grape, to create the elegant, Cerasuolo di Vittoria, one of the more traditional and respected Sicilian wines of the island.
Grillo and Inzolia, the grapes of Marsala, are also used to produce aromatic, crisp dry Sicilian white. Pantelleria, a subtropical island belonging to the province of Sicily, specializes in Moscato di Pantelleria, made from the variety locally known as Zibibbo.