2018 Graci Etna Bianco DOC Sicily 750 ml

At $24, this 2018 Graci Etna Bianco will spare you the expense of beholding Sicily’s most striking landmark while transporting you straight there in a single sip: Sleek and focused, the palate hums with mineral energy, pulsing with crushed river rock and sea spray before finishing clean and long on the finish. “Beautiful,” summarized the Wine Advocate’s Monica Larner, adding it’s “[just what] I adore in a white wine.”

The palpable terroir expression of Sicily’s Mount Etna has become as legendary as its wines in recent years, but as the Wine Advocate wrote in its 91+-point review of this luminous white, “Graci's interpretation offers more in terms of mouthfeel and texture than most of his peers.” 

Like plucking a lemon straight off the tree, the aromas evoke the full experience of first inhaling its sweet outer peel before cutting through to reveal all that fresh-squeezed juice and savory pith. The drama unfolds slowly as the crisp top-notes deepen into a salty preserved lemon component after a few swirls before expanding beyond citrus into green plum and perfumed white flower. 

With all the mineral verve we’d expect from the slopes of an active volcano that still regularly emits plumes of smoke, the purity of this Bianco defies its price and then some—and given its 3,300-foot-high vineyard source—so does its provenance.

Young Alberto Aiello Graci planted his vines at the upward limit at which they can ripen, where the volcano's promise far outweighs the threat. There, only his indigenous Carricante and Catarratto grapes could so successfully derive nutrients from the countless lava flows and ash that gave rise to them. His uniquely-shaped amphitheater vineyard mitigates Sicily’s piercing sunlight with salty breezes off the Ionian Sea, enabling ripening while maintaining the brisk tension that makes it impossible to set the glass down if this Bianco is in it. 

A former banker, Graci is accustomed to taking high stakes risks. This one sure paid off, in the form of supercharged wines of such intensity and character that the Consorzio for the Etna DOC took notice and appointed him vice president of the regional body—immediately anointing him as the Etna producer to know. He has since used his growing clout to inspire his vineyard peers to adopt the same organic, low intervention methods he uses to allow these mountain grapes to speak for themselves. 

His newfound influence and deeply terroir-driven wines have attracted the recent attention of everyone from the Wine Advocate to the New York Times to Piemonte legend Angelo Gaja. When the 100-point Barolo baron decided to pursue a venture on Etna, there was only one producer he wanted to partner with—Alberto Graci. 

Graci’s humble pricing belies the inimitable complexity and mineral drive that makes it into every bottle of his wine. At $24 per bottle, this Bianco is your chance to experience a standard-setting white from one of Etna’s rising superstars.