Alessandro di Camporeale, Sicilia DOC (Sicily, Italy) Catarratto 2019

 The Catarratto grape variety is under-estimated due to some overshadowing by Carricante on Etna (where Catrarratto is generally a bit player in blends) as well as its role in the making of Marsala, which can be fantastic but isn’t quite the world’s most fashionable wine at the moment.  However, when cropped sparingly and taken seriously in the cellar, the grape can make terrific, food-friendly wine – and this really lives up to both of those characterizations.  It is medium-bodied, with good palate weight but plenty of freshening acidity.  Both the aromas and flavors recall citrus and melon fruits, with faint notes of straw and dried herbs.  The finish shows lots of Sicily’s famed minerality as well as a hint of (very pleasant) bitterness recalling grated citrus zest.  I’ve loved earlier vintages of this wine, and though they were hard to track down in the USA, the bottles were amazingly inexpensive for a wine that shows real “layered” complexity as well as “sequential” complexity (meaning, different flavors and sensations presented by the wine as one moves from aromas to initial flavors to midpalate and finish).