Wine & Spirits - October 2020 - 21

Benjamin North Spencer made wine in California for a decade before moving to
Sicily in 2012, where he founded the Etna Wine School. He has just released a new
book on the wines of Mount Etna, a region producing some of Sicily's-and Italy's-
most sought-after wines. Stephanie Johnson recently spoke with Spencer about the
place that has become his home. The interview has been edited for length and clarity; for a more extensive version and video excerpts of the interview, please visit
wineandspiritsmagazine.com.

VINEYARD PHOTOS BY STEPHANIE JOHNSON

PHOTO OF BENJAMIN SPENCER BY VALERIE QUINTANILLA;

Why Etna?
I came here in 2007 with my wife (we met in
California; she's from here) and on my first
afternoon in Sicily, I just fell in love with it.
I discovered these wines from the volcano
with no variety or origin, but this savoriness
and this really beautiful quality about them
that was stunning to me. The whole experience of sitting between the sea and the volcano, drinking a wine that blew my top off,
was life-altering.
In all of my studies and experiences with
wine, Etna is the only place in the world that
keeps me interested. We're literally positioned
between water and fire. How many places in
the world create fine wine from the edge of the
world? As short as the modern history is, everyone is still learning on the job, so very few producers have an absolute set mentality. There's
still a lot of room for discovery and learning,
and for me, that's what wine is.
Radical Geology
Etna is this volcanic cone that stands 10,600
feet high on the eastern coast of Sicily. The
coastline is subtropical, but farther into the
center of the volcano it becomes an alpine situation. Lava flows, from different times, cross
through the DOC. Within this volcanic cone,
formed over 220,000 years, we have countless
changes in elevation, aspect, exposure to sea
and winds. The age of the volcanic lava flow,
the depth of the topsoil, and the slope are all
crucial [to the styles of the wines].
On the north slope, where you have more
deflected sunlight in spring and fall and more
direct light in the summer, you end up with
different types of elegance, intensity and complexity in the wines. This quadrant saw a huge
boom in the early 2000s, and even now there
are producers who are investing millions of
euros in land and vineyards there.
On the eastern slope, Milo is where you see a
lot of these lava tongues coming down toward
the sea. It's the area for Etna's only Superiore
category-Etna Bianco Superiore, a minimum of 80 percent carricante, a very salty,
briny white wine. The eastern slope is typically more rainy, the sands a little bit cooler,
the allophane [weathered volcanic ash] a little

more prominent, and it tends to give full-bodied red wines with soft, supple flavors. They
have a rounder, more lush profile as compared
to red wines on the north slope.
Allophane?
Allophane is Etna's secret weapon. It's the
primordial volcanic clay, typically formed as
a result of silica and iron breaking down. It
often forms about one meter below the surface. Allophane is crystalline and amorphous,
but it has enough of a structure to hold water
and trap nutrients like nitrogen, potassium
and phosphorus. As the vine tips go through
soil, they tap into this layer of allophane and it
gives them water and nutrients when the vines
need it, without oversaturating the root tips.
The Southern Slope
South of Milo are about 35 extinct volcanic craters, and 319 lateral or parasitic cones-where
magma escaped in a seismic event and a pyroclastic explosion and then closed in on itself,
leaving a huge pile of sand, rock and metal.
The slopes of these small parasitic cones can
have sand on one side, rock on the other, and
different exposures to the sun and the wind,
with valley floors in between filled with gravitational erosions and inorganic material. There's
a lot of biodiversity and a lot more field blends
in this quadrant of the DOC-a lot of old vineyards planted on their own roots, with different relic varieties mixed in with the standard
varieties. You get very elegant wines with good
complexity and intensity of flavor.

Roots and Grafts
Here on Etna, particularly with nerello mascalese, the vine is transmitting the fertility
and age of the soil. When you put an intermediary between nerello and the earth (meaning an American rootstock created in a nursery), you change the yields, what the plant
feeds on, the amount of water and nutrients
it brings up. Vines that are in direct communication with the mountain are able to
say something about Etna that vines with
rootstocks simply cannot. Wines from vines
that have been grafted with American rootstock are often more playful in the aromas,
brighter, more ethereal, very high-toned with
almost candied fruit, but also there's a thinness that you don't see in own-rooted vines,
which have darker, more brooding flavor and
aroma profiles, with more salty and tertiary
flavors.
 
Modernist, Minimalist, Naturalist
Etna has a very short history with regard to the
DOC, created in 1968, but a large number of
producers that have flocked to the mountain
since the late 1990s. You have modernists looking at temperature control and anaerobic control to keep fresh flavors, and you also have the
naturalist and minimalist movements occurring at the same time. There is something to be
said about the naturally rustic quality of Etna
wines; the varieties have all grown up in a very
harsh environment, and they have found a
fineness in these last 20 or 30 years with experimentations in temperature control, stainless
steel and some neutral wood aging. These two
roads are converging in a lot of ways, and the
best wines will win out in the end. [Wine drinkers] have an opportunity to help define Etna,
because it's evolving in real time, and they can
communicate instantaneously with producers
via social media. They can make their feelings
known, and producers are still flexible enough
that 10 or 20 comments can shift a practice
the following year or encourage them to keep
going in a certain direction. It's a fantastic time
to be here on Etna and for people to discover
it together, at the same time as the producers
are discovering it. n 
WINE & SPIRITS

OCTOBER 2020

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Wine & Spirits - October 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - October 2020

Contents
Wine & Spirits - October 2020 - Cover1
Wine & Spirits - October 2020 - Cover2
Wine & Spirits - October 2020 - 1
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Wine & Spirits - October 2020 - Cover3
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