If we didn’t have climate change, or as some called it early on, in the beginning, global warming, we’d still have Etna. Can the local practices put into place, because of the pressures of Etna, act as an instructional manual for other grape growing places in the world dealing with the immediacy of climate change? I wondered that as I walked along a lava strewn path early one morning. The weather was changing from the warm breeze of summer to the looming fog and coolness of autumn, in the background was the eternal soundtrack playing the low groans of the earth’s core and Etna acting as a megaphone for those rumblings.
And so, what of the wine coming from that process? Is it not a bit of an odious comparison when some folks try and draw equivalents between Etna and Burgundy? I’ve been to both places and the feeling is sure not the same. In my view, the life of the vine, and the people who tend them, in Burgundy, is vastly different from those on and in Etna – radically!
In truth, most of whom I am talking to about this aren’t on the mountain. Those who are, in my conversations, tacitly agree and understand, even if some of them are not able to verbalize about it. The mountain drives everything. Not so in Burgundy. (the merchants?)
Sicily being another country apart from Italy (disagree with me if you will, but change my mind you will not), things have always been done a little differently anyway. Plop an active and very voluble volcano onto it, and you have the stuff operas are written about. Except this is a slow train of geological history, sputtering up the hill, slowly but very determinedly.
But what about the wines, the voices keep crying about.
When one is in a place where a tornado hits, depending on where one sits and where the tornado hits, there can be many different reactions and responses. A few years ago, one came remarkably close to where we live. We suffered relatively minor damage, a few tree limbs down and a piece of roof tar missing. But a mile away, homes were wiped from the face of the earth.
And likewise, on Etna, there will be different points of contact and with it, interpretations of style and taste. And that is the stew we are cooking at the moment. It’s a slumgullion, as we say in America, a slow stew with ingredients from all corners of the world. On Etna, now that the world has discovered it and it is a hot piece of real estate, the various ingredients have ascended upon the mountain, with their money and their values and their ideas and their hopes and dreams. Along with the indigenous folk who have been there for centuries. One thing for sure, the mountain, as always, will call the shots. The wine that will be made and those who make the wine, eventually must defer to the will of Etna; you can be sure of that.
