100% Catarratto, the fruit for the De Bartolis' ‘Lucido’ bottling comes from vines located not on the home estate in the Samperi contrada in Marsala, but slightly further north in the province of Trapani. As Sicily’s most widely planted grape, it suffices to say that Catarratto is a fairly ubiquitous variety here off the toe of ‘the boot,’ but there exists a far lesser-seen Catarratto biotype known Lucido, featured in this bottling, whose berries have a less powdery, more glimmering surface, and moreover, greater potential for white wines of serious substance and intrigue. Fermented and raised entirely in steel tanks, the 2022 ‘Lucido’ is intense and complex, driving with briney, seaside aromatics on the nose and palate. Incisively bone dry, one finds themself wading through exotic elements of bitter almond, orange blossom water, cardamom and white flowers, the wine packing a round, waxy texture in the mouth, tempered by plenty of vibrating acidity.
At the westernmost tip of Sicily, Marsala is an ancient city with a complex and fascinating history, born of its location along ancient seafaring, military and trade routes. On every trade mission and conquest for millenia, Marsala was inevitably planted with vines, leading eventually to the very particular wine tradition for which it has become known globally for over two hundred years: a fortified wine combining many aspects of Madeira, Sherry and Port, known still today as Marsala. As with many of the more off-beat and out-of-the-way European wine regions, modernization and commercialization saw Marsala (and many other of Sicily’s wine regions) enter a drastic decline during the 20th century. Enter Marco De Bartoli. While initially eschewing his agriculture roots to pursue a career in auto racing, he returned to his homeland, a scion determined to revamp the family business and Marsala’s reputation. Today the de Bartolis are renowned for their pivotal leadership in resurrecting the fortunes of the serious Marsala wine category, though the De Bartoli’s raft of delicious sweet and dry wines from the nearby island of Pantelleria (a project that emerged in the mid 1980s) are of equal intrigue to drinkers driven by curiosity of all things ‘off the beaten track.’