Catarratto

Catarratto is Sicily's most-planted white grape and one of the most widely grown vine varieties in all of Italy — the quiet workhorse behind a huge share of the island's white wine. Long valued as much for quantity as for character, it is the classic base of Marsala and a backbone of everyday Sicilian whites, yet in careful hands it makes a bright, honest dry wine of real charm: pale straw with green flashes, crisp and dry, with lemon and green-apple citrus, a herbal-green edge and a distinctly saline, stony minerality drawn from Sicily's sun-baked, sea-girdled vineyards. Refreshing, unpretentious and food-loving, it is the everyday white of the island's own table.