It’s not easy being Faro.
One of Italy’s smallest wine appellations, Faro nestles along northeastern Sicily’s Messina coast, producing good-to-gorgeous red wines dominated by Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio—the same grapes that reign on volcanic Mount Etna 40 miles south.
But Etna and its booming wine scene seem to get almost all the attention, leaving Sicilian neighbors in its shadow.
Like Faro. Dotting the hills along 30 miles of coast, the appellation’s 18 producers cultivate a mere 75 acres (while Etna has more than 400 producers on some 3,200 vineyard acres). Yet Faro wines deserve some loving too.
Think of Faro as Etna’s little cousin making wines that are softer on the palate, with more ripe fruit, balsam notes and spice, along with generally lower alcohol levels.
“In the wines of Faro, you taste the sea, the salinity,” says Salvatore Geraci, the Messina architect who helped save the Faro appellation from extinction in the 1990s with his cult Palari winery, which has since acquired a vineyard on Etna. “In the wines of Etna, you taste the minerality—the fumé.”
Both reds are shaped by different extreme terroirs and different blends.
The vineyards of Faro lie in largely uncultivated countryside with soils of clay mixed with sand or limestone. The mythic Strait of Messina, separating the eastern tip of Sicily from the toe of Italy’s boot in Calabria, brings intense winds and currents that cool off the Mediterranean climate.
The last 30 years have seen a slow but steady relaunch of Faro from its ashes. The main culprit for Faro’s destruction was the deadly 1908 Messina earthquake that flattened the city and destroyed an agricultural industry centered around citrus for the perfume industry, along with Faro wines.
“It’s a big area, and there are many [abandoned] terraces and expositions to discover,” says Gianfranco Sabbatino of Le Casematte, the area’s largest winery with an annual production of 5,000 cases.
Sabbatino and now-retired Italian soccer legend Andrea Barzagli launched Le Casematte in 2011, naming it after the pair of World War I and World War II military observation bunkers that sit in their vineyards overlooking the strait.
As for the blend, both Etna reds and Faro wines start with the two Nerellos. Faro wines, however, require the addition of 5 to 10 percent Nocera, a rare Messina native that can be found in even rarer, single-variety bottlings such as Le Casematte’s Nanuci and Bonavita’s Ilnò.
“Nocera gives the identity to our wines: balsamic [notes] and spice,” says Maurizio Costantino of Cuppari. The 1,000-case-a-year winery is part of the P. Cuppari public agricultural high school, housed in a 16th-century monastery on the cliffs above the Ionian Sea. “For me, it is the heart of Faro.”
Both Etna and Faro reds also allow up to 10 percent of “other” varieties. In Faro, those permitted grapes are Calabria’s Gaglioppo, Central Italy’s Sangiovese and southern Sicily’s Nero d’Avola.
But using those “others” is the subject of debate.
“Nero d’Avola? Sangiovese? What sense is in that?” says Geraci. “We must not be tempted to touch them.”
A fellow purist on that point is the noteworthy producer Giovanni Scarfone of Bonavita, who began bottling Faro wine from his great-grandfather’s vineyards in 2006.
But the president of the Faro consortium, Enza La Fauci, says most Faro producers—including her eponymous winery, Cuppari and Le Casematte—complete their wines with Sangiovese and/or Nero d’Avola.
“I was one of the first to plant Nero d’Avola here, and people thought I was crazy,” says La Fauci, who began cultivating grapevines on her family’s land about 20 years ago and now produces about 1,500 cases annually. “I love Nero d’Avola—the licorice and the depth. It’s beautiful.”
For such a Lilliputian-scale appellation, it has garnered a lot of thought and experimentation, as well as advice from some of Italy’s top enologists: Tuscan winemaker Emiliano Falsini works with La Fauci, Montalcino’s Carlo Ferrini consults at Le Casematte, and Piedmont’s Donato Lanati has worked with Palari from its beginning.
“It’s a wine of great quality and potential,” says Cuppari’s Costantino. “We’re in a niche, but we can grow.”
We all can. My advice is as follows: The next time the Nerello mood strikes, invite wine-loving friends to dinner and grab two bottles—one Etna Rosso and one Faro, preferably from the same vintage. Open, pour, sip, savor, discuss. Repeat as necessary.
