This week’s dream: on the wine trail in Sicily
Sicily is a “huge, complicated island”, says Stephen Bayley in The Independent. And one visit is not nearly enough to do it justice. Everything is more “deeply etched” here than mainland Italy: “the wines are stronger, the volcanoes more active, the dolci more sweet, the despair more profound”. This is an island largely defined by the many outsiders that have colonised it – Romans, Normans, Byzantines and more – and left behind “a culture as rich as ricotta-stuffed cannoli”. Giuseppe de Lampedusa wrote of “the violence of the landscape, the cruelty of the climate and the continuous tensions in everything”. His book, The Leopard, should be compulsory reading for anyone planning a visit.
In Palermo, Villa Tasca is one of Sicily’s great houses, evolved “through layers of architectural accretion into a magnificent palazzo”. Its gardens are “swarmingly exotic”, filled with dense palms and “the largest ficus in Sicily”. Its interiors are a study in “Baroque splendour and spectacular, melancholic grandeur”. The house is owned by the winemaking Tasca family, and it’s possible to rent a room here with butler service, making it “the most exuberantly grand and glorious b&b imaginable”. About two hours’ drive along a potholed road lies the family’s Regaleali winery. It’s rustic and isolated, with a cookery school and rooms to rent in the big house. “The remoteness here is tangible, the silence ineffable and the romance intense.” Wine pilgrims meet in the evenings for an aperitivo, then “eat robustly in a solemn dining room”.
Over to the west, off the coast near Trapani, the Tascas are extending their reach to Mozia, where a development is planned. This “strange little island sits in a tranquil lagoon called Stagnone, lined with windmills and salt pans”. Settled by the Phoenicians around 800BC, it remains scattered with “shards of classical pottery” as yet undisturbed by archaeologists. Villa Tasca (www.villatasca.com) has a range of suites. Contact info@villatasca.com for information.