Our friend SUNSHINE LICHAUCO DE LEON, journalist and producer, after having visited us numerous times has send us this lovely story.
Follow Sunshine on www. sunshinedeleon.com
There is nothing like exploring Sicily through the eyes of a Sicilian. They know and love their beautiful island with a passion that is contagious and admirable. Sicilians and southern Italians do everything with extreme passion whether hate or love, and Sicilians love their home.
Mount Etna is, with its 3343 meters above the sea level, the highest volcano in Europa and for us it’s also the most beautiful. It stands uncontested against the huge sky that has witnessed its birth and its polyhedral transformations over the course of time. Ruler of part of Eastern Sicily, its pride and its restless nature have been accurately recorded over thousands of years, bestowing upon Mungibeddu, a nickname affectionately given to the mountain by the population living on his slopes, a sense of reference, gratitude and respect unique all over the world, which is typical of a holy mountain.
Curiosity, a need for oxygen and salt air and the necessity of a short change of perspective brought us here, on the distant and wild Alicudi.
It’s not easy coming here. There are few connections and it takes almost 3 hours by hydrofoil from Milazzo. As soon as you touch the ground, however, you enter another dimension: a small society, shaped by the proud heights of this ancient volcano. Alicudi is nothing else than the emerged part of a more than 150 million years old volcano (Etna was born approximately 600 thousand years ago). If you try humanizing volcanos, just for a second, assuming that Etna was a little 18 years old girl (Sicilian people often attribute the feminine gender to Mont Etna: “a Muntagna!” (la montagna – the mountain)), then Alicudi would be a lively 4500 years old man.
Respect to Alicudi.
Last night we were contacted by some friends who wanted to congratulate us for the good article posted on the influential wine and food blog of Luciano Pignataro. We were pleasantly surprised and honored by the praises to our wines, Millesulmare and Calmarossa, written by the journalist and sommelier Fabio Panci, who tried a Calmarossa of 2011 and a vertical tasting of Millesulmare at Vinitaly.
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