It's always best to have a glass in hand as you read our varietal guides... Here's where to find a Nerello Mascalese in our range:
- Entry level, younger vines, still delicious and typical: Etna Rosso
- Very good field blend with Nerello Cappuccio (90/10) from 90 year old vines: Etna Rosso "Qubba"
- As good as it gets, 100% Nerello Mascalese and vines so old no one knows when they were planed (but at least pre the 1911 eruption of Etna): Etna Rosso "Rumex"
Will the variety be on the label?
No. Like most European wines, you don't tend to see Nerello Mascalese written on the label of the wines it is made from. Instead, you should look for "Etna Rosso."
While Nerello Mascalese is grown in small volumes elsewhere in Italy (particularly Calabria and Sardinia), 90% of the global crop is from Sicily. And the wines you should care about are more specifically from the slopes of Mt Etna.
Etna Rosso is required by regulation to be at least 80% Nerello Mascalese, with Nerello Cappuccio sometimes being blended for additional colour and fruit flavours. In the range from Monteleone, both the estate Etna Rosso, as well as the single vineyard "Qubba", are made from field blends of the two grapes, with a 90/10 split. That means the vines are planted together, and the grapes are harvested, pressed and fermented together. The single vineyard "Rumex" is a 100% Nerello Mascalese wine.
Varietal characteristics
Nerello Mascalese tends to produce wine of high aroma intensity, with high acidity, medium to high tannins, and medium to high alcohol.
Typically, the flavours will centre around red cherries, violets and herbal notes. If that sounds a bit like Sangiovese to you then read on below!
Of course, this description is an average and because Nerello Mascalese is so good at taking on the character of the terroir of its vineyard, there is plenty of variation. On the slopes of Etna, it's common to detect a smoky aroma, and the cherry character tends toward the sour (in the best possible way) end of the flavour spectrum.
A bit of history
Nerello Mascalese is a very old variety, so its genetic origins are not clear, but recent analysis suggests Sangiovese is one of its parent varieties. No wonder we love it so much!
It is said to have originated on the Mascali plain, which is a strip of land to the east of Mt Etna between the mountain and the Ionian sea. If you've ever visited the tourist hotspot of Taormina, you've probably come pretty close to its birthplace.
Modern reincarnation
Its ability to reflect the terroir in which it is grown is the reason Nerello Mascalese is now often compared to Nebbiolo and Pinot Noir, but that recognition has been a long time coming. In soils that are too fertile, it produces boring high volume wines (a bit like Nebbiolo and Pinot Noir in the wrong hands). But the higher diurnal range (temperature difference between night and day), altitude variations and volcanic soils of various ages means the slopes of Mt Etna are producing some excellent, and diverse, examples of the variety. Vineyards on those slopes have become hot property for some of the world's greatest winemakers, including the likes of the Piemontese Gaja family buying vineyards in 2017, the same year that Giulia Monteleone and Benedetto Alessandro started to buy vineyards on the volcano for the Monteleone label.
Along with Carricante, the most important white variety of Mt Etna, Nerello Mascalese is at the centre of a push to have Mt Etna recognised as a DOCG, the highest quality Italian wine region designation. Local winemakers hope that recognition will come soon.
It would be an overdue acknowledgement of an extraordinary wine style.
