Catarratto, the Sicilian answer to the wine crisis
At Santa Cristina Gela in the Palermo area, the first festival dedicated to the island's most cultivated grape variety. Businesses aim to move from quantity to quality, linked to the territory and Arbëreshë culture
by Nino Amadore
Key points
To make Catarratto no longer the symbol of an agricultural Sicily that produces a lot, but the sign of a wine-growing Sicily that wants to produce better, tell a better story and sell better. For decades this wine has been told almost only through numbers: hectares, yields, production capacity. Now a group of producers is trying to change this perspective. Catarratto must become a tale. And the tale must start from the places.
A paradigm shift at a difficult time for wine
The point is not only oenological. It is economic and cultural. In a difficult phase for wine, in which it is no longer enough to produce a lot to stay on the market, the decision to focus on Catarratto takes on the value of a paradigm shift. It means taking a historic grape variety, often associated with quantity, and transforming it into a lever of identity, reputation and value. No longer the wine that fills cellars. But the wine that narrates a territory and tries to impose itself for its qualities.
The Catarratto Festival in Santa Cristina Gela
Hence the first Catarratto Festival, scheduled for 6 and 7 June in Santa Cristina Gela, in the Palermo area. Not a simple promotional event, but an experiment that can become a model: bringing together producers, the local community, Arbëreshë culture, gastronomy and landscape to build a stronger narrative around the wine. Catarratto is not presented as an isolated product, but as an expression of a precise area, an agricultural history and a community that preserves language, traditions and memory.
"The first Catarratto Festival was born as an experiment in the education, promotion and valorisation of Catarratto," explains Sebastiano Di Bella, ARCA president and producer. The objective, he adds, is to involve "the territory and the local community" and integrate wine production "in a broader cultural context", making known the most authentic expressions of the vine.
Arca wineries and Catarratto numbers
The initiative is promoted by Arca, the Regional Association of Authentic Catarratto, together with the six founding companies: Bagliesi, Caruso & Minini, Castellucci Miano, Di Bella, Feudo Disisa and Tenute Lombardo. The project starts from an impressive datum: in Sicily, Catarratto still occupies about 28 thousand hectares, although in the 1990s it was about 90 thousand. Within this reduction there is already the sign of a season that is over. The future can no longer be entrusted to production capacity alone. It must come through selection, quality, recognisability.
