SICILIA

I’d just finished the first draft of a new/old novel and was thinking about a change of pace when Hago and Danny called with news of an upcoming trip to Sicily. Just the break I needed. I’d never been there. All I knew of Sicily came from Andrea Camilleri and Francis Coppola. That was enough to get me on a plane.

The village of Castiglione spills over a rocky slope not far from Mt. Etna. The first thing you notice is how old everything is–homes, churches, streets, the land itself. There’s not much left of the namesake castle top of the hill.

The highest wine bar in town appears to have been carved out of the castle walls. Compounding the sense of age are the death notices plastered on every available space throughout town.

They are pasted over advertisements and partially covered by other notices creating a palimpsest (love that word) of village culture and the knowledge that death is always present in life.

The odd thing here is that none of them are drinking. And it’s that way every night. I have no idea how Giuseppe who owns the bar and makes a mean Negroni makes a living.

Back to Mt. Etna. It’s somewhere around 10,000 feet tall, but that’s enough to make its own weather, which, combined with the volcanic soil, contributes to some interesting wine. You’d expect wines from this far south to be huge and highly alcoholic–see Roussillon, France–but the Etna micro-climate and soil allow the vintners to create a lean, elegant wine from the Nerello Mascalese grape. Delicious.

Siracusa is a city on the Ionian seacoast. The old section, Ortigia, is actually an island. The protein, as you might expect, comes from the sea.

The old section of an old city in a very old land, so old they even age the Negronis.

Caves. First thought to mind was, of course, Odysseus. I’m sure it was yours too. But the lad is thought to have washed ashore off the coast of Croatia. I don’t think so. These caves are perfect and if our captain had only gone in a little deeper, who knows what wonders we could have found.