Benjamin Spencer and The New Wines of Mount Etna

Benjamin Spencer, author of The New Wines of Mount Etna and Director of the Etna Wine School, is a celebrated voice in the world of wine, with a deep-rooted passion for the volcanic terroir of Sicily’s Mount Etna. As a sommelier, wine educator, and winemaker himself, Spencer brings both a scholar’s insight and a craftsman’s perspective to his exploration of Etna’s unique viticultural landscape.

Grape Collective talks to Spencer about the past and the future of Etna’s wine culture.

Christopher Barnes: Talk a little bit about how you ended up on Mount Etna involved in the wine scene here.

Benjamin Spencer: I first came to Mount Etna in 2007 on my one year anniversary with my wife, who is from Riposto here on the east coast of Sicily. That afternoon I knew that I would somehow end up living here. Making wine in California for 10 years, the wines of Mount Etna were of interest to me because they were still yet unexplored. There were a lot of producers working here, but they weren’t yet understanding what the potential of the mountain was.

In 2012, we ended up moving here from California, and I fell into the wine business as a consulting winemaker, then launched the Etna Wine School in 2013. I began throwing myself up and down the mountain, meeting producers, tasting their wines, spending time with them and their families. Here, what we’re seeing is that wine is being rediscovered in real time — it is like discovering wine again for the first time, in some cases even after 10 years of working here.

What was the wine scene like in 2007 on Etna?

There wasn’t a lot known about the wines or what the potential was for Carricante or Nerello Mascalese. In that same year, you start to see a lot of attention turning toward Mount Etna — Benanti winning winery of the year from Gambero Rosso and Slow Food. So 2007, for me, is a really important moment in Etna’s history.

Talk about the scale of winemaking between 2000 and 2010.

Going back 30 years, we see about five to eight wineries producing wine and bottling it for distribution. Now we have 165 wineries producing Etna DOC wines (as of April 2022), and that number keeps changing because new wineries are being formed every day. You also see investment from outside — people from Belgium, from Tuscany, from other parts of Sicily — moving toward Etna with an interest not only in the terrain but in the potential for making wine here.

Give us a brief history — Etna is a very old wine region, and also a very young one.

Etna’s wine history goes back to the eighth century BCE, when the Greeks set up their own vineyards in the valley of the Alcantara River. This current wave that we are seeing is possibly one of the most important since the outbreak of phylloxera at the end of the 1800s, when merchants turned to Etna to supply the wine economy of France, Northern Italy and Southern Spain — Etna was producing about 55% of all the wine in Sicily at that time. World War II devastated this part of Sicily, and a lot of the countryside was abandoned. But following the 1990s and a renewed interest in making quality wines with Carricante and Nerello Mascalese, you see real momentum toward something different from the indigenous varieties that have grown here for a very long time.

Talk about the origin of the volcano.

Mount Etna is roughly 3,470 meters above sea level. It was formed beneath the sea about 500,000 years ago, where the African plate was subducting beneath the Eurasian plate, creating a hotspot that eventually rose above the surface of the water. We end up with a single volcanic cone called the Ellittico volcano, which erupted about 15,000 years ago and rearranged the plumbing of the mountain, followed by the explosive activity of the Mongibello volcano, which is the edifice we see today. About 85% of the mountain is covered in volcanic debris — rock, sand, basalt, silica loaded with iron, aluminum and magnesium.

There’s something historical about the palmento tradition that has been curtailed by regulation. Talk about where that stands today.

Palmento is a gravity-operated stone winemaking facility, a tradition going back thousands of years. The EU effectively made these facilities illegal in 1978, more or less for bureaucratic reasons connected to sanitation concerns. In recent years there has been a lot of effort to restore the use of these facilities, both by producers making Etna DOC wines and by those bringing visitors in to show them the importance of this tradition. Considering that no human pathogen can be found in any wine made in these facilities, it makes no sense to keep them outside of the Etna DOC legislation. Some of the best wines I’ve had have actually been made in a palmento.

Etna has come so far in such a short period of time. What do you think is next?

Etna is on a path toward incredible things. I changed my life and moved here because I believe in Etna, 100%. Etna’s future is still a little bit undetermined, but what I see is incredible wines, amazing food, adventure at every turn, and just enough uncertainty to keep things interesting.

Originally interviewed by Christopher Barnes for Grape Collective.