Nero d'Avola

Nero d'Avola is Sicily's most planted and most important red grape. Its name means the black of Avola, after a town in the island's south-east, though it is grown across Sicily; its alternative name, Calabrese, is misleading and probably derives from a Sicilian dialect phrase rather than from Calabria.

The wine is deeply coloured and full-bodied, with black cherry, plum and blackberry, and notes of liquorice, tobacco, dried herbs and a warm, faintly balsamic character. Tannins are firm but ripe, and acidity is better than the hot climate would suggest — one of the grape's genuine assets.

For most of the twentieth century it was grown for bulk, and enormous volumes were shipped north to add colour and alcohol to thin wines in France and northern Italy. The reinvention of Sicilian wine from the 1990s onwards was built substantially on this grape, and the difference between the old bulk material and modern estate wine is dramatic.

Site matters considerably. In the hot, low-lying south-west it gives ripe, soft, alcoholic wine. On the higher ground of the south-east around Noto and Pachino, and in the interior hills, it retains acidity and develops far more aromatic complexity and structure.

It is one of the two grapes of Cerasuolo di Vittoria, blended with Frappato, where its depth is lifted by the lighter grape's perfume.

Comparisons to Syrah are common and reasonable, particularly for the darker, peppery styles.

Its acidity is the quality that separates good Nero d'Avola from the bulk material. In the flat, hot south-west of Sicily the grape ripens fast and the acid falls away, producing soft, alcoholic wine; on higher ground and on the cooler south-eastern coast it holds structure and the wine gains real definition.

The grape also responds well to being blended, and the Cerasuolo di Vittoria pairing with Frappato is the most persuasive demonstration — the lighter grape lifts Nero d'Avola's density into something considerably more aromatic than either makes alone.

The transformation of Sicilian wine since the 1990s has been one of the most complete in Europe, moving from a bulk-supplying region to one with a genuine identity, and this grape carried most of that change. The practical consequence for a buyer is that vintages before about 2000 and estate wines after it are barely the same product.