2016 Planeta Sicilia Santa Cecilia Rosso, Sicily

2016 Santa Cecilia is a very spicy and fruity wine, brilliant and clear, perfumed with carob, bergamot, incence and orange peel. The compact ripe fruit and balsamic notes on the palate dissolve in a sweet and vigorous manner to accompany tannins of dense texture but also open and calibrated to the structure of this wine of deep baritone tones. Traces of graphite confer elements of a high tasting lineage while cleverly elicited wild blackberry and black cherry maintain the wine on a register of rigorous style and taste.

A wine which has no fear of the riskiest matchings such as pork marinated with chili pepper or dishes of fish with rich fibrous flesh.

The 2016 Noto Santa Cecilia takes its icon Sicilian wine status to heart and delivers a knockout performance that is both powerful and elegant, Sicilian and international. A wine like this needs revisiting every once in a while and you can taste the more focused and streamlined style in a recent vintage like this compared to one that may have been released ten or more years ago. The importance of a wine like this is that it creates a blueprint or a timeline for Sicilian winemaking in general. You can trace the stylistic changes through the years. In this case, dark fruit is followed by scorched earth, black olive and wild Sicilian fennel. Those authentic Nero d'Avola aromas emerge with momentum and determination. October 2019