westside white wine + the lonely perricone

Finally, southern Italian wine is on the up-and-up internationally! We are starting to see little sparkles of Sicilian nero d'avola or frappato wines popping up on restaurant lists among the occasional Primitivo from Puglia or a Greco di Tufo from Campania/Calabria. However, getting southern Italian people to drink southern Italian wines is another great feat - to be conquered at another time and by another guy (read as Silvestro Silvestori's new wine program cheekily called "TERRONIA"). 

After living for one year on the largest family-owned wine estate in Sicily, I thought I had a good start to learning about Sicilian wines. Here we are four years after my first visit to Palermo and those bright virgin sips of catarratto. Working with Fabrizia Lanza at Case Vecchie, we served the cooking school guests a wine for aperitivo, two or three wines with dinner and sometimes a dessert wine or homemade liqueur after the meal. I tasted my way through every single label of those Tasca d'Almerita wines at Regaleali -- but still, so much more to learn. 

Along comes my friend Silve: a handsome smart guy from Puglia who is a certified sommelier, a Southern Italian wine expert and freelance writer for Wine & Spirits magazine. "Wanna go on a cycling trip around Puglia to visit wineries for a couple of weeks?" After convincing him to move the trip to Sicilia, this cheeky chick was on board.

Here's a little wine update from the #CHEEKYbici trip. I am no expert so I'll generalize and break it up this way: There are incredible white grapes growing on the west side of Sicily and killer reds on the eastern side (with bits of overlap, of course). There are certainly great reds that grow all over the island and vice versa with the white grapes. Sicily also has a history of growing international varietals (chardonnay, cabernet, merlot, syrah, etc.) in many different parts of the island, and a few drag-queens, as I'll call them, like perricone (red grape on the west side) and carricante (a white grape from the east) who dare to be different because of their complexity.

WESTCOAST SICILIAN VARIETALS:

catarratto | grapes produce a golden-colored wine + they are planted all around the island. this is the most common white grape used for marsala wine. 

grillo | a true westcoaster grown in Marsala, Palermo, Trapani and Agrigento. grillo wines have a deep yellow color and they can actually age fairly well. 

inzolia | also known as "ansonica", can be used in making marsala. inzolia has a greenish hue with a very strong herbal aroma.  

zibibbo | also known as "moscato di Pantelleria", brought to Sicily by the Romans, these are grown mainly on the island of Pantelleria where the grapes are dried and made into a dessert wine called passito. 

pericone | a.k.a. pignatello is the most planted grape in all of western Sicily, perricone is found mostly in the regions of Palermo, Trapani and Agrigento. these special wines have a medium body and red candy cherry flavor like cocacola and they are best if you drink them while the wine is still young...this is not an ager.

CHEEKY'S PICKS FOR SICILY'S WESTCOAST VINO BIANCO:

Bosco Falconeria, Catarratto IGT from Alcamo

Tasca d'Almerita, Grillo Cavallo delle Fate, Sicilia DOC

Cantine Barbera, Dietro le Case, Inzolia Menfi DOC

Donnafugata, Ben Ryé, Passito di Pantelleria DOP

Menfi with Marilena Barbera

“Sicilia non è un’isola, è un arcipelago.”

— la mamma Nina Barbera

On the #CHEEKYbici cycling trip through Sicily, our next stop was a visit to Marilena Barbera in Menfi. She is a winemaker that Silvestro was excited to finally meet after many trips back and forth missing one another. We never knew when or where the cycling trip would lead us which made planning winery visits, hotel bookings and restaurant ressies a bit difficult. Sometimes coastal winds, torrential rain, hangovers would keep us from making it from point A to point B in the time we expected. In the main piazza of Menfi, we asked a young guy where we might find a hotel for the night. This guy randomly had a pamphlet for a chic hotel (not what you typically find in rural Sicily) but after a few calls around to B&B's we opted to go for the fancy place. We biked completely uphill for 45 minutes or so to finally arrive at the hotel. It was a brand new place with great rooms and even a pool! After the crazy bike ride to find the hotel, we decided that it would be impossible to walk to town for dinner and biking after dark was out of question. Take out from seamless.com is not an option here in Sicilia. With the help of the concierge, we found a pizzeria in Menfi that was kindly willing to deliver food to us via Vespa up to the hotel. With a few bottles of wine and pizza in the room, we were happy and nobody was complaining. The next day was our visit to Marilena's winery!

We arrived at Cantine Barbera with our bicycles, just a quick trip from the town this time. Marilena Barbera is a bombshell gorgeous smiley woman with strawberry hair, not what you might expect from a Sicilian. That's the beauty of this island! The people, the food, the culture is all a wonderful mix. Marilena and her mother, Nina, gave us a tour of the winery and showed us the small bottling facility, the cellar and took us to the tasting room to try a few of her delicious wines. We tasted two inzolia white wines from Menfi and two red blends.

At Cantine Barbera, they are located so close to the sea on the southwest of the island so you can actually taste the salinity in the wine. The beauty of this location is that the vineyards can benefit from warm dry summer weather, a coastal breeze, and a mild winter season. Marilena is the third generation of her family making wine here; her grandfather started planting in the 1920's. She plants Sicilian white varietals like inzolia, catarratto and grillo plus reds like perricone, nerello mascalese and nero d'avola. Marilena is very good at marketing internationally and travels abroad often to wine fairs and to meet buyers, restaurateurs and customers. Her social media presence is well beyond many other Sicilian wineries especially with the small size of her production. In NYC, the imported T.Edwards carries most of her wines here in the States. She will be coming to the States sometime this year and hopefully collaborating on a dinner with me!
 

CANTINE BARBERA | viticultori in Menfi

Azienda Agricola Barbera, Contrada Torrenova S.P. 79, 92013 Menfi (Agrigento) Italia

Tel. +39.0925.570442 | Marilena Barbera | info@cantinebarbera.it | http://www.cantinebarbera.it

Linda fends off pervy shepherds while Silvestro feels the wind in his hair: Marsala + Mazara del Vallo

The core muscle-building biking days of the CHEEKYbici Sicilian bicycle trip were along the route to Menfi. I call these the "Kardashian-booty-training days". We were riding up to 70km per day from Trapani through Marsala to Mazara del Vallo on the first day and Mazara, Campobello di Mazara, Castelvetrano to Menfi on the next. This was pretty much the same route on the way back as well. We started along a country road near the salt pans that line the coast from Trapani to Marsala, stopping to take photos and change flat tires (Silvestro's, not mine). At the halfway point, we took a break for a quick lunch in the main piazza of Marsala and shared salami sandwiches, a container of buttery green olives and a bag of sesame cookies called biscotti regina before taking a little cat nap in the sun. It was Palm Sunday when we first stopped in Marsala so there were little kids learning how to braid palms to sell in front of the church. 

From Marsala, the next stop was Mazara del Vallo a main port city on the southwest edge of Sicily. We rode into Mazara del Vallo over a long high bridge just as the sun was setting; wind blowing in our hair (well, not Silvestro's), sun on our faces, with a feeling of peace and complete open mind and heart. Of all of the breathtaking views on the trip, all of the rolling green hills covered in tiny white and yellow wild flowers, all of the baroque cities built like little wooden carvings into a mountainside...the moment we rode over that bridge into Mazara will still be one of our shared favorites of the trip. 

After a night in a rented apartment (in let's call it the shadiest of our hotel choices), we said arrivederci to Julio (a made-up name that I gave him) the skeevy groundskeeper, and took off verso Menfi to finally hit some vineyards! As we rode along the sleepy flat roads through Campobello di Mazara and Castelvetrano, we stopped to take photos of a sweet contadino (farmer) named Vincenzo pruning his grape vines and a shepherd with a flock of sheep and a flock of dogs to match. Silvestro's pro-tip is always stop and talk to people. There was a great encounter with Vincenzo as he showed us how he dry prunes and twists the branches along wires to train them to grow how he wants. On the other hand, my girly intuition to stop and take photos of the fat old shepherd and his fluffy white sheep was quickly put in check by Silvestro's warning to "stai attento" because these lone shepherds are stereotypically the horniest guys we'll meet on the road. Sicilians will take one finger and pull it down under your eye as a sign to be careful and keep an eye out. That's pretty much the vibe I got but I wasn't afraid of an old pervy shepherd; he couldn't catch us on the bikes anyway.

Here's some photos from the west side of the island and a quick video of Vincenzo explaining his pruning process on the Catarratto Lucido vines.

Vincenzo pruning his vines near Campobello di Mazara, Sicilia

visiting my sicilian olive oil producer

Back in New York City, I have a collaborative partnership with the italian import company Gustiamo. I first met Danielle Aquino (the newest part-owner) while we both were working in Sicily. After graduating with a masters from Bocconi in Milan, Danielle moved back to the U.S. to join Gustiamo full-time. Now, I have started using more and more Gustiamo-imported products in my private chef and catering work. Besides the perfectly plump capers packed in salt from Pantelleria, my favorite go-to product is the Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Tenuta Pianogrillo near Ragusa in Sicily. 

Lorenzo Piccione di Pianogrillo, the owner of Tenuta Pianogrillo, is a true "renaissance man." He is simply dolcissimo and completely impressive in his wide variety of talents. Lorenzo is an artist, a concert pianist, a farmer, a winemaker, and most importantly - an incredible olive oil producer. He is very savvy with social media (follow on instagram @pianogrillo_farm) so I felt like I've known him for awhile before actually visiting the farm. I sent my friend Anna Watson Carl (The Yellow Table cookbook author and contributor to Saveur.com) with a little checklist of things to do and people to meet in Sicily when she went for the first time in January... a Palermo Street Food Tour with Salvo Agusta, winery visit to Arianna Occhipinti, Modica chocolate shop to meet Pierpaolo Ruta at BonAjuto, and a trip to Chiaramonte Gulfi to see the Pianogrillo olive orchard. 

When I was joining Silvestro Silvestori on this #CHEEKYbici bicycle trip through Sicily, he had just a few requests in the planning: if I wanted to visit any Sicilian ex boyfriends or try to track down long lost family members, I needed to take a few days and do that on my own. The agreement was this: my family is 100% Greek-American so we're all good there and if we plan to avoid Palermo and a few small villages surrounding Regaleali, we would have no trouble with i fidanzati siciliani. As we planned part of our trip around discovering the delicious DOCG Cerasuolo di Vittoria wines near Ragusa, I booked us an afternoon with Lorenzo at Pianogrillo!

Following the perfectly positioned street signs directing us towards Contrada Pianogrillo (yes, this sounds completely unbelievable In Sicily) we were greeted with open arms by Lorenzo Piccione; a tall, happy, salt-and-peppery bearded man wearing knee high riding boots. What a sight! After a few long exhausting bicycle trips around Ragusa, we were so happy to pack up the car, visit Lorenzo, then head north towards Mt. Etna for the rest of the trip. 

At Pianogrillo, they are situated near the Iblei mountain range which is where the name for the olives comes from. The olives that are used for the Sicilian extra virgin olive oil that Gustiamo imports into the US are 100% tonda iblea - a special bright green, round olive that can be pressed for oil and also "da salare" to preserve and eat! 

The property at Pianogrillo has a 30-hectare orchard of bio olive trees, and another 30 for grapes, citrus trees, gorgeous stables for horses and animals like the suino nero black pigs, little rabbits, chickens + goats. The new addition is the farm-chic cantina for winemaking. We tasted Curva Minore (a frapatto and nero d'avola blend) right from the barrels in the cantina and had a nice snack of salame, pane ragusano and a bottle of Grillo in Lorenzo's kitchen. 

Silvestro, a true Pugliese olive oil snob, even purchased two cases of oil to bring back home. He loves the bitter boom-boom-pow that you get with oil from Puglia but was happy to  try out the grassy buttery tonda iblea oil and even bring some mini cans back as gifts for his staff. Lorenzo packed us up with wine, estratto di pomodoro, salsa pronta made with cherry tomatoes, loads of olive oil and even two of his homemade black pork salami to smuggle back through customs.

It was such a special visit with Lorenzo Piccione at Pianogrillo in Chiaramonte Gulfi. Not every private chef has a chance to meet the people who make their ingredients or actually visit the small farms or vineyards where they are grown.  I'm so lucky to be a Chef in a place like New York where there are companies like Gustiamo to help source these great international products for me. If I can't have a hotel with a garden near the sea in Sicily just yet, I'll stick with my importer to bring all the good italian stuff right to my front door in Brooklyn. 

Azienda Agricola di Pianogrillo, Chiaramonte Gulfi (Ragusa), Sicily | www.pianogrillo.it

buy it from www.gustiamo.com | discount code: cheekychef 

Lorenzo Piccione + Linda Sarris  

pane ragusano, a special semola rimacinata bread baked in the region of Ragusa, Sicily

Lorenzo's kitchen

proper street signs? che cos'è?!  

Grillo 2014 from Azienda Baroni di Pianogrillo

in Lorenzo's kitchen

Tenuta Pianogrillo, Chiaramonte Gulfi, Sicilia

the little baby suino nero black pigs

Silvio (berlusconi) the hog at Pianogrillo

roadtrip from Puglia to Sicily

my partner in crime, Silvestro Silvestori

Calabria

his fancy expensive bike had more flat tires than my shitty old trooper. holla!

How do you pick a partner for a 20 day roadtrip? We were finding someone to spend 24-hours a day with, eat every meal together, sleep in the same room, exercise/sweat/stink together, and only have privacy when the bathroom door closes or when we're fast asleep. It's not easy. 

Most people know I'm pretty low-maintenance (as any girl would like to think she is) but ask my nearest & dearest and they will be a bit worried I'd get sick of someone very quickly.  Other than best friends and boyfriends, I've only successfully spent a week with one other guy so far without going mad. It was one week in June of 2014 at the seaside with my best italian friend Alessandro on what we called our faux honeymoon. For this year's biking adventure, Silvestro Silvestori asked me to join him for almost 3 weeks on the road, just the two of us, and I couldn't have found a better partner. We were both lucky I think. 

Silvestro owns the cutest regional food and wine school in the south of Italy. He started The Awaiting Table about 12 years ago in his home in Lecce, Puglia. The school focuses on the food of the Salento, a special section of Puglia, surrounded by two seas at the bottom of the boot's heel. I feel like I've known him for years thanks to blogging and social media but we finally met in July 2013 when I visited his school for a cooking course. 

When I arrived in Lecce, we packed up saddlebags for the bicycles and did a test run to make sure I didn't pack too much stuff. To think the only things I actually left behind in Lecce were a bathing suit and a couple extra lipsticks, I think I packed quite well. We loaded up Silvestro's car with two bicycles, our bags, my Spotify account packed with killer jams for the ride and a small wooden box with two wine glasses and a bottle opener (in case of emergency). We were ready to roll. 

Driving through Puglia, Basilicata and Calabria I was falling in love with the south. Silvestro is a true cheerleader for the south of Italy and repeatedly told me that the things I am so in love with about Sicily are also true of the whole south. I think he's finally cracked through my tough candy shell. Puglia is filled with olive groves and fields of artichokes with no rolling hills to block your view for miles and miles. Basilicata had orchards of breathtaking purple flowering trees (maybe apricots or peaches) that got me so excited to see Sicily's almond blossoms but actually the timing was not right. The coast of Calabria had bright blue water like the Caribbean and we stopped at a lookout point to see a beautiful castle on the sea with a veg vendor parked in front with a truck full of dried chilies. It was like a postcard. 

This was probably Silvestro's 9th biking trip, having done this before with other female partners whether they were long-time friends, work acquaintances or girlfriends. I guess we both took a risk when I booked my flight to Brindisi without much of a plan for our cycling trip to visit Sicilian wineries. He tried to keep me calm and trust that he's done this trip before and it's not easy to make a plan for wine tours, hotels or meeting up with producers and friends. We never know how long it will take to bike from city to city, if there will be rain or if we have bicycle trouble - so to ditch work for 3 weeks and take off across the ocean without a plan wasn't exactly comforting for me. The  capricorn ex-project manager in me was about to freak out but having someone as patient and smart as  Silvestro on my side through this adventure was really my little rabbit's foot. 

The Awaiting Table Cookery School

www.awaitingtable.com

@ssilvestori @awaitingtable

98km DAY 1

Our first day biking to Otranto in Puglia was a great start to the trip. today we left the city of Lecce and went out towards the Adriatic Sea, bikes south through a national wildlife park called Le Cesine, to the city of Otranto and back. 98km in about 6 hours, butt bones are killing me but all n all feelin good! today we will pack the car and load the bikes for a drive from Puglia to Sicily.

andiamo 🚲

La Riserva Naturale dello Stato Oasi WWF

CHEEKYbici

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: thecheekychef@gmail.com

March 24, 2015

#CHEEKYtravel #CHEEKYbici www.lindasarris.com

Linda Sarris, “The Cheeky Chef,” Begins Food and Wine Bicycle Tour Through Italy

Follow the journey of Sarris and Chef Silvestro Silvestori as they discover the best foods and wines throughout Southern Italy on Instagram @thecheekychef

Brooklyn, NY -- Brooklyn-based private chef Linda Sarris is setting off March 26 on a three-week bicycle adventure across Sicily with Silvestro Silvestori, the Italian chef/owner of The Awaiting Table, a culinary school in Lecce, Puglia. Sarris and Silvestori will visit wineries and restaurants from Mt. Etna to Ragusa, Siracusa and Vittoria.

Sarris, who studied classical culinary arts at the French Culinary Institute and trained as a chef in New York, Sicily and Tuscany, specializes in farm-to-table Italian food. She will be sharing her journey with others on her Instagram page, @thecheekychef, and on her blog at www.lindasarris.com/blog

“We are traveling for about 20 days, visiting wineries and restaurants. Silvestro specializes in wines from this region of Southern Italy and Sicily. For me, learning more about the foods and wines of this region will help me build on my skills as a private chef, enabling me to pair wine more effectively, and make me more of a resource for my clients. I take trips like this to get inspired, so I can come back to New York and share what I learned,” Sarris said.

All throughout her journey, she will be taking pictures of the places, the food and the wine she and Silvestori discover, and sharing them with her followers.

“I love my Panasonic Lumix camera. It captures amazing pictures, and it has WiFi, so I can send a picture from my camera to my phone to Instagram very easily, without needing to use a computer. That's going to be very good for me on this tour, because I'm biking around with a backpack to hold everything I have,” she said. “I don't want to take my computer with me – but I do want to post my pictures all along the way.”

Follow her journey at http://www.lindasarris.com/blog.

About Linda Sarris

Raised in a big Greek-American family with a chef grandfather and a fisherman dad, Linda has been in love with food her whole life. She's traveled to over 25 countries in search of caipirinhas, fresh octopus and oysters, volcanic wines and hardcore street food. After the French Culinary Institute and a few stints in restaurants, Linda took off to sharpen her culinary skills in her own adventurous way –working on a farm-to-table cooking school and wine estate in Sicily, spending a summer working as a private chef in Tuscany, and consulting for a restaurant in Bucharest, Romania.She is currently freelancing in New York and available for dinner parties, private cooking lessons and travel for private chef jobs.