Financial Times

One of the most exciting aspects of her job is discovering new wine regions, says Jancis Robinson, and these are not necessarily in far flung corners of the globe; nor are they new in the strictest sense of the word. On a recent tasting trip to Sicily, she witnessed the launch of a new-old wine region on the slopes of Mount Etna. While viticulture is nothing new on Etna, it is only recently that particularly mineral influenced wines grown on Etna's slopes have begun a renaissance in their own right. This "new wave" of Etna wine dates back to 2001 when two wine growers, Belgian Frank Cornelissen and Italian Andrea Franchetti independently identified something special about these volcanically inspired wines and began to make wine from them. Now, the number of outsiders involved with Etna wine production is growing every year. The dominant grape is Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio.