Savory Sicilian Red - Wine & Spirits Magazine

Wine of the Week

Savory Sicilian Red

by Stephanie Johnson • August 29, 2022

Valle dell’Acate’s Contrada Biddini Soprano Vineyard (Photo: Maurizio Cugnata)

Valle dell’Acate’s red wines always stand out in a blind tasting for their explosive aromas of wildflowers and brushy herbs, so evocative of southern Sicily’s windswept Vittoria countryside. This wine is no exception, exuding scents of freshly cut grass, tobacco leaf and menthol that meld with flavors of juicy strawberry and raspberry. Savory tones emerge as the wine opens in the glass, complementing those herb-tinged red fruit flavors.

93

Valle dell’Acate 2019 Cerasuolo di Vittoria

$31

Where To Buy

Every week, our editors highlight a wine that intrigued them in our blind panel tastings, expanding on their tasting note in this space. These are entirely editorial choices; there are no paid placements. Subscribers can also access the original tasting note by searching h ere.

Stephanie Johnson

is the Italian wine editor at Wine & Spirits magazine.

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TAGS Italy Sicily Wine of the Week

David Paradela
Associate Editor

David joined Wine & Spirits in 2021 after immersing himself in the world of wine at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally from Boston, he graduated from Boston University with a degree in English and completed a master’s degree in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College in 2021. Prior to working at the magazine, he served as an editor and staff writer for the music blog Sound of Boston and worked in scientific publishing. Aside from wine, he loves basketball, arguing about Taylor Swift’s best album, and everything Greta Gerwig touches.

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Corey Warren moved to New York in 2015—fifteen years too late to join The Strokes—after earning a degree at Cornell in Comparative Literature. He started polishing glasses at Betony and threw himself into the restaurant world. Later, while a captain at Aquavit, he began working part time in the Wine & Spirits tasting department. Now, in addition to running tastings, he serves as critic for the wines of the Loire, Southern France, Argentina and South Africa. Corey likes almost anything bubbly, from Miller High Life, the Champagne of beers, to Champagne, the Champagne of Champagne, but he’ll drink anything once, and loves finding unique wines.

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Senior Correspondent

After graduating with a degree in journalism from the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Patricio Tapia attended Bordeaux University in France, where he studied for a diploma in wine tasting and winemaking. Since then, he has visited wine regions around the world and authored several books, including his annual Descorchados, a Chilean wine guide; The Wines of Colchagua Valley; TodoVino and Wines for Great Occasions. Tapia is also the South American correspondent for The Oxford Companion to Wine, The World Atlas of Wine and Oz Clarke’s Pocket Wine Book. For the past three years, he’s been a host on the El Gourmet channel in South America. At Wine & Spirits, Tapia is the critic for the wines of Argentina, Chile and Spain, and regularly contributes articles on these regions.