Up and up I climb. I’ve left the Catania to Messina motorway behind and, high above, I glimpse the summit of Mount Etna, that formidable, mystical volcano. One final short, but steep, ascent leads me to my destination on its North-Eastern slope, Agriturismo Notti Stellate. The place doesn’t belie its name: as I’ll later find out, the nights here truly are starry.

Like most other agriturismos (independently-owned farms used in part for accommodation purposes), Notti Stellate is a side-business. The real focus here is on winemaking under the name of Etnella, a winery founded some 12 years ago by Davide Bentivegna. In a previous life he pursued a corporate career in Milan but, realising he wasn’t happy, decided instead to dedicate his life to making natural wine on the slopes of Mount Etna.

Sicilian by birth, but with no family history in winemaking, Davide first spent a year reading as much as he could on the subject of winemaking. What he couldn’t pick up from books, he learnt thanks to a local mentor. “When I came here, the neighbour of my first plot of land was an old man who only had one vineyard,” Davide says. “He only made one wine, which he didn't sell: he made it for himself. We developed a friendship and he saw my passion. He transmitted many basics to me, knowledge that came from the ground, not from the books—he had learnt from his grandfather.”

Here, know-how is typically passed down in the family, generation to generation. Thanks to this neighbour-turned-mentor, Davide began to carve out a place for himself in the long history of winemaking on Etna. But, as someone who had chosen to make natural wine his profession, he needed extra input. “Spoken tradition is not supported by in-depth or critical analysis and I wanted more. I really dug deep,” he tells me.

By taking part in wine fairs and travelling, he was able to meet other natural wine producers like Stefano Belloti, Aldo Viola and, locally, Frank Cornelissen. “They could answer those nitty-gritty questions I had. This is the beautiful thing about this trade—it's so difficult, so tough that there is a tendency, especially in the natural wine world, to help and support one another.”

Although unplanned, my arrival at sundown turns out to have been fortuitous. The sky, awash in pastel hues, is at one with the tranquil Ionian Sea far in the distance; from up here, the dividing line between liquid and air can hardly be distinguished. The gradually darkening outline of Etna’s vegetation stands out in sharp contrast against this soft backdrop, but lower down this outline fades away as it becomes enshrouded in a veil of mist—Etna, too, melts into the sea. It’s this prime position between sea and sky that makes wine from Etna so special, including the ones Davide makes.

The Etnella vineyards sit between 600m and 1000m from sea level, meaning they are subject to diurnal shifts. “It's pretty extreme weather since there’s both mountain and sea influence,” Davide tells me. “You get the sun of Sicily and the coldness of Mount Etna at the same time. It impacts the grape in many ways.”

The hot days allow for sugars to develop in the grapes, while the cold nights allow for freshness and acidity. The fact that it’s a volcano, not a mountain is also significant. “The black lava gives a distinct phenolic profile to the wines and the black stones that are on the surface reflect light and help create brightness. That's how you can have grapes at such high altitudes,” he continues.

Across this 400-metre altitude range, Etnella comprises of 15 different vineyards across seven different contrade, the Sicilian equivalent of a cru (vineyards recognised for their superior potential for growth). The contrade each have different expositions, altitude levels, lava stratifications, soil types and mesoclimates (the climatic conditions of a specific vineyard), specificities which manifest themselves in the taste of the grape. Each wine is thus shaped and influenced by this very localised provenance.

Etnella’s simple label designs represent a heartfelt expression of these variations. At first glance, the labels of each wine all seem the same but on closer inspection, I realise that within the ragged outline of that corner of Sicily a red dot pinpoints the specific contrada and that it is identified by a number—its height above sea level—rather than the place name.

***

Later that evening, as night falls, Davide offers me a glass of his wine, while giving me a tour of the farmstead in what we jokingly refer to as “Wine Olympics.” The terrain is far from easy to navigate, especially in darkness that is almost as dense as the igneous rock of Etna at our feet. We stumble through the vegetation, glass in hand—perching on a rock here, a tree-stump there. At every point of interest, we stop for a glass while Davide explains his vision. We cover a lot of ground. We talk agriculture, but also philosophy.

“The lucky aspect of being a newcomer in this world and not having formal training is that you see that many things are possible,” he tells me. “At school they format you to believe that wine can only be made by having a scientific approach.”

Davide, however, sees winemaking as a system comprising nature and human intervention. Natural wine, which extols low intervention at every stage, places nature first. “Even natural wine is the result of man interacting with nature but the difference is that you don't want to prevail over nature. The natural wine approach consists of listening to and interpenetrating nature to try to get the best out of it. It is always a faulty exercise, because there are so many variables—nature, the weather, your understanding... I always say that wine is a sum of actions, it's a chorus.”

““Even natural wine is the result of man interacting with nature but the difference is that you don’t want to prevail over nature.””

— Davide Bentivegna

Nature certainly plays a great part, but humans are also central and there is a profoundly humanistic side to Davide’s outlook. “I have moved towards this concept of an anthropocentric wine—when I drink a wine, I'm drinking a producer, I'm drinking a project, I'm drinking an idea of the work,” he says. “Even if it has flaws, or maybe some defects, I prefer to drink this because it is true, because it talks to me, than to drink something perfect that has no soul.”

This outlook doesn’t stop at winemakers: “I believe that natural wine is made with an ethical relationship towards everything around you, not just nature and the people that work with you but your customers as well.”

Inevitably, this also encompasses the intermediaries, namely wine merchants. All those that sell his wines are obliged to visit him. “They cannot work commercially with my wines unless they have visited—many of them now come every year,” he tells me. “It has become a tradition to be here, to taste the new vintages, to talk together. It's also good for me to get feedback on what the world is thinking.” And so, out of the respect for the other, notions of circularity and exchange emerge.

We ponder this basking in the soft glow emitted from the towns on the coast, the shimmer of the stars and blazing eruptions high overhead. Serendipity has it that Etna started erupting a couple of days before my arrival. Visible during the day, at night this takes on new proportions: the red lava spurts up into the dark, a beacon signalling that Etna is like no other mountain.

“It's an extremely powerful relationship,” Davide explains. “I like to say that I'm a guardian and a servant of this mountain.” In every aspect of his work, he respects and nurtures the volcano. In return, Etna gives a lot back: to give just one example, the sulphur emitted by the volcano disperses with the wind, a natural disinfectant for the vines. It’s a balanced, harmonious two-way relationship.

***

The next morning I find that, unbeknown to me, any sightseeing plans that I might have had have been scrapped by Davide. My day suddenly takes on a new, unplanned course and I find myself driving down the small roads, pot-holed roads of Etna. We skirt around the volcano, which smokes on, unnervingly, in the distance. Dry-stone wall—a puzzle of lavatic stones, carefully selected and slotted together according to their shape and size—structure the landscape. The terraces bring order to the wild, hazardous landscape of Mount Etna and serve as a reminder that, here, connections to the past run deep. They tell of centuries of human attempts to tame this unforgiving landscape to make it cultivable.

“Our work is to restore and preserve these very old vineyards.” David says. This includes training the vines according to the local method called alberello. Known in English as bush-trained vines, the free-standing plants are kept low to the ground. It’s a labour-intensive process, since it doesn’t allow for mechanisation. “They get air, they get more sun. You also create more competition among the plants. They root more deeply into the soil, they pick out minerals more profoundly,” he explains to me with enthusiasm.

“They aren’t at risk of drought—they dig down, they always find some humidity, some water. It also has some practical implications—the way they are planted was perfected by the Romans and it means that when you plough you can turn around easily, minimising your effort.”

Practicalities aside, there’s also aesthetics and Davide considers alberello as being the most beautiful vines. The word crops up again in our conversation a short while later. Etna is home to vines which survived phylloxera, the parasite that decimated most of Europe’s vineyards in the nineteenth century. “These are vines that are 100-120 years old—beautiful old ladies,” David tells me enthusiastically. “They are not very productive but they are really perfect.”

Some traditions, however, are too complicated to uphold. Like many other farmsteads in the area, Etnella has its own palmento (a stone building traditionally used to make wine). Here, recently harvested grapes would have been pressed by foot, squelching, oozing underfoot before allowing the gravitational pull to draw out the juices. “Sanitary legislation forbids you to use these old palmenti. It was blindness from the politicians. These laws are made in the E.U. so they disregard our long-term winemaking traditions,” Davide says. “It becomes more expensive to fix and make a place like this legal than to build a new one.” No longer in use, the palmento has become a nostalgic memento.

***

Come lunchtime we find ourselves in Passopiasciaro, a place renowned for its winemaking. Davide has bought me here to see the contrada called Vigna Santo Spirito. Vineyards surround us; it’s a bucolic setting for the simple repast of local cheese and beef alla griglia finished with wild rosemary and olive oil which Davide sets about to prepare.

Sitting 780 metres above sea level, Vigna Santo Spirito is crossed by a meridian. It’s very windy and all rock. Etnella’s Villa Petrosa di Santo Spirito—a red wine which happens to be one of Davide’s favourites—is made from the Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio grapes harvested at this contrada.

“I'm very attached to this wine,” he says. “It is made according to a traditional technique that I learnt from this old man in which you use the entire bunch, including the stems, and short skin-contact maceration. This is only possible with very old vines because the stems of old vines mature; they aren’t green so they don’t bring in those green tannins. It's a wine that has lightness, but is also full and complex at the same time. I like that one in my heart a lot.”

Scientifically speaking Etna is classified as active. Although perhaps it would maybe be more apt to describe Etna as being alive: its height changes from eruption to eruption; it breathes (sometimes imperceptibly, other times in lava-filled exhalations); its soil is incredibly fertile, rich in the minerals expectorated from the Earth’s centre. This fertility is mirrored in the rich, abundant vegetation that includes chestnut trees.

In the past, these trees provided the wood to make barrels in which wine was aged, a Sicilian tradition which is continued in Etnella’s Kaos wine. “I was lucky enough to meet a craftsman, the son of an old barrel-maker who had inherited this trade,” he recalls. “Together we took apart very old barrels that were to be found in palmenti, reconditioned the wood and rebuilt the barrels. We also sourced Etna wood from wood makers and created new barrels. It gives the wine another distinctive taste.”

“Over the years there has been some contradiction in me over wood. Sometimes the taste of wood can be a little old-fashioned in a wine. Nowadays, you look for more neutral elements like amphorae or concrete tanks which are used as well. For the real nerello mascalese with the long skin-contact maceration, I still believe in ageing in wood though,” Davide continues.

Chestnut trees aren’t the only plant to reap the benefits of Etna’s rich soil; the volcano boasts numerous plant varieties. Biodiversity is important to Davide—olive and fruit trees grow near his vines allowing for cross-pollination and a natural balance.

“Diversity is extremely important for healthy plots of land and within the same breed of grapes. Let's say we use Nerello Mascalese for the red,” he explains. “You can have different clones that behave differently and then you have hybridisation between the plants: they adapt to the place, they mix with some others. And if you don't use yeast [or] exogenous materials in wine, this will express itself as a unique taste, as something unrepeatable. Every year is going to be different.”

Over the course of a day, Etna’s identity shifts, at times austere, commanding respect, at other times joyful. These shifts belong to something much bigger; Mount Etna has acquired different names over time—Montebello, a Muntagna, Aítne, Aetna—so defined by the different people that have populated its inclines since it was born. The wines of Etnella are a mirror to the multiple, fleeting identities of this mother, Etna.