The New Volcanic Wines of Sicily’s Mount Etna with Ben Spencer

Natalie MacLean 00:00:00 How to elevation and slope influence the style of volcanic wines on Mount Etna. What can volcanic wine made on Mount Etna teach us about life? And how is Mount Etna wine scene evolving? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in our chat with Ben Spencer, the award winning author of The New Wines of Mount Etna. By the end of our conversation, you’ll also discover what left a lasting impression from Ben’s first trip to Sicily in 2007. What stood out about Ben’s first experience tasting Etna wine? How his early experience exploring Aetna’s vineyards changed his understanding of the region. What the wines of Etna show us about the relationship between winemaking and life. The biggest differences between winemaking in California and Etna. Aside from terroir, what the future looks like for Mount Etna wines, the limitation of the Etna Doc classification and the viable elevation range for the vineyards. How wine characteristics vary between vines grown in different areas of the mountain. How periodic eruptions affect the soil in the vineyards on the slopes of Mount Etna.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:20 How Ben’s poetry background influenced his transition into wine writing. The most surprising thing Ben discovered while writing the new Wines of Mount Etna, and why researching the book was particularly challenging.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:40 Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host Natalie MacLean. And each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:22 Welcome to episode 352. I love this conversation with Ben as it brought back memories of my trip to Sicily many years ago. I’ll share the opening of chapter five from my second book, unquenchable A Tipsy Search for the World’s Best Bargain Bottles, and it was entitled Vino Under the Volcano. I expected something a little more dramatic.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:45 The sizzle of a lava river oozing down the volcano, the rumble of the earth as it split between my feet, the screams of villagers running for their lives. Instead, all I hear the clicks of tourist cameras as we look up at Mount Etna, its white tip puffing peacefully against the blue sky. To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, Gerta wrote. For Sicily is the clue to everything. That’s why I’m here, on this island of dazzling sunshine and menacing shadows, with its barely controlled wilderness and passionate personalities. I’ve heard that the people here have fiery tempers, forming friendships over lunch and falling out by dinner. No one does vendettas like the Sicilians. I like my wines with the little hellfire in them. Volcanic viticulture fascinates me. Making wine from water is well so B.C.E., but making wine from lava. Now that fires the imagination, I also believe that Justice Sicily is the clue to Italy. Today’s wine winemaking unlocks the country’s venous past. The ancient Greeks believed that Sicily was the birthplace of wine.

Natalie MacLean 00:04:03 One of their legends describes the journey that Bacchus made from Mount Olympus to the island, carrying a tiny vine in a hollowed out bird bone. As he traveled, the plant kept growing, so he moved it into a lion’s bone and then into a donkey’s bone. When he got to Sicily, he planted the vine, and from the grapes it bore, he made the world’s first wine. The symbolic message is that a little wine will make you light as a bird. A little more will make you brave as a lion, and a lot more will make you dumb as an ass. The Greeks called Sicily Nino tria, meaning land of vines, from the Greek Enos for wine. The Athenians invaded the island in 415 BCE. According to the historian Thucydides in his history of the Peloponnesian Wars. Determined to spread Hellenic culture and government. Greek city states such as Syracuse Syracuse had been long established on Sicily. Along with the cultivation of grapevines. Homer described Sicilian vineyards as. Watered by Zeus, yielding wine of strength in which ambrosia and nectar flowed in abundance.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:16 Odysseus used that robust, best local wine to intoxicate the Cyclops, so that he and his crew could escape from the island. The boulders strewn along the coastline are supposedly the ones the Cyclops hurled after the departing ship by 404 BCE. The Spartans and Persians had helped the Sicilians to oust the Athenians, and they in turn were ousted by the Romans, who were eventually kicked out themselves by the locals. The island’s strategic position in the middle of the Mediterranean meant that someone was usually invading it. You could see the successive conquering influences in the architecture of the capital city Palermo a Greek temple, a Norman church, a Roman theatre, a moorish roofline, Arab flourishes on a balcony and window, a bourbon archway, stairs between buildings tilt right and left like a game of snakes and ladders. The markets feel ancient and mysterious, bustling with colorful people and prados, but edged with dark, shadowed alleyways. Palermo is an open air museum, a boisterous blend of narrow streets, piazzas lined with multicolored mosaic tiles, fashionable wine bars and bistros, grand opera houses and soaring cathedrals.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:36 On this 1600 square mile island, a tiny football a mile off the toe of mainland Italy. There are about 300,000 acres under vine, more than in Bordeaux and Chile combined. It produces 180 million gallons a year, more than all of Australia. If Sicily were a country, it would be the fifth largest wine producer in the world. Producers here refer to the island as a continent of wine, both for its production and diversity. One of the world’s oldest and youngest winemaking regions, Sicily is trying to resolve that conflict between ancient local traditions and modern international style. For years, southern vintners had no incentive to make fine wine for export. Grape prices were so low that producers earned more money making workhorse wines for local consumption and low end export. Most wine made here was sold by the tanker load to beef up prestigious but anemic wines from northern Italy and in France, where it was often delivered to estates back entrances at night. Sicily also has a cultural divide, with the rest of Italy, especially the north, that produces some of the most beautifully designed clothing, cars and wine in the world.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:52 The brand names roll luxuriously off a consumption loving tongue. Ferrari. Ferragamo. Danilo. In fact, few countries have such a contrast between an industrious north with its sleek fashions, fast cars and 4% unemployment, and the languid, lawless south with its agrarian focus, slower pace and 20% joblessness. There’s even a divide between southern Italy and Sicily. The islanders refused to build a bridge to the mainland just a mile away, even though it would help with commerce and tourism. No wonder Sicilians are often considered the most Italian of Italians. Fierce. Loyal. Stubborn. Passionate. That divide in Italian culture extends to winemaking, which the rest of the world has long perceived as either cheap and cheerful, or else costly and confusing. Think of those squat, straw wrapped Chianti bottles, candle optional, that epitomized the 60s and 70s. Now think of the sleek, gold embossed labels of Super Tuscans such as Saskia and Tiny Nello that represent the greed is good 80s and 90s. There’s never been much of a middle ground for consumers who just want good quality, reasonably priced Italian wines until lately, and you can find some of those good quality, reasonably priced Italian wines on Instagram, where I review them at Natalie MacLean wine.

Natalie MacLean 00:09:23 I’ll post links to this book and my others in the show notes at Natalie MacLean 435 two. I hope this entices you to read the rest. If you’re reading the paperback or e-book, or listening to the audiobook of my memoir, Wine Witch on Fire Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, defamation, and Drinking Too Much, and national bestseller and one of Amazon’s best books of the year, I would love to hear from you at Natalie at Natalie MacLean dot com. I’d happily send you. Beautifully designed, personally signed bookplates for the copies you buy or give as gifts. Okay, on with the show. Ben Spencer is the director of the Etna Wine School and an award winning author of The New Wines of Mount Etna, which The New York Times describes as excellent armchair traveling. In addition to holding a WSF diploma, Ben is a journalist, wine judge, and a professional winemaker with two decades experience working with artisan and internationally traded wine brands in California and Italy. And he joins us now from his home in Mount Etna.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:35 Welcome, Ben. We’re so glad you could join us.

Ben Spencer 00:10:37 Thank you very much. It’s great to be here.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:40 I understand the volcano is active as we speak.

Ben Spencer 00:10:43 Yeah, yeah, we’ve had quite an active few days On Monday, we had an enormous eruption and started out with a single crater emitting a little bit of steam, and then some earthquakes and then some ash, and then very quickly escalated to something quite massive. They caught the world by storm. A lot of newspapers published front page articles and photos of the eruption, and we’re still seeing a little bit of electromagnetic activity. Three vents are currently steaming big, bright white columns into the blue sky. So if for any reason we have any delays in our connection here, it’s probably because of the activity that’s happening on the volcano. And this happens pretty regularly.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:32 And if you need to run for your life, we understand, okay.

Ben Spencer 00:11:36 It’s a very, very, very lazy lava over here.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:40 Well, that’s the best kind then allows you to get out alive.

Ben Spencer 00:11:44 Exactly.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:45 Okay. And don’t mind me. There are slight pauses in our transmission right now, so if I sort of pause and I’m staring at you, even though you finished, it’s not to be awkward. It’s that there’s some pauses going on.

Ben Spencer 00:11:58 No problem, I understand.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:00 All right, so you began your wine journey far from Sicily, in upstate New York, and then later became a winemaker in California before moving to Mount Etna. So tell us about your first visit to Sicily. Back in 2007.

Ben Spencer 00:12:14 Yeah, it was quite eye opening. I was on my first, wedding anniversary. my wife was born and raised here, and we decided to come here for a vacation. 10 to 14 days or so. We hadn’t really planned a return trip at the time, but it was very eye opening. Not only the cultural aspect, but also the food, the wine, just the feeling of living or spending time on an island with one of the largest, actually the largest active volcano in Europe, right on your doorstep.

Ben Spencer 00:12:51 So I was quite impressed. And it left a lasting mark in my heart and also my mind. And I knew very quickly that we would end up living here.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:00 What was it about the culture that surprised you most?

Ben Spencer 00:13:05 you know how a lot of people say that there are places that they move to because the weather suits their clothes? Well, Etna, really. And Sicily really is a place that suits my lifestyle, my sense of pace. I really love, the day in and day out. Slow approach to life. You work so that you can live. You don’t live to work. And there are pauses during the day that allow you to do that. People don’t ask you what your job is necessarily. They ask you what you had to eat or how you’re doing or what you’ve been up to. So there’s a really interesting difference there with respect to big cities, especially in Western culture and the many places that I’ve lived. So this really suited my sense of pace, my sense of lifestyle.

Ben Spencer 00:14:04 And I’ve been here for 13 years now.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:07 Wow. That reminds me of when I go back home to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It’s all about family. And where are your parents from or whatever? It’s not about what you do in terms of defining you or what’s of interest to other people. So I love that. Now, your first taste of Vietnam wine was, if I’m correct, a nameless bulk white wine served to you at a seaside restaurant. Where were you? What was it and why was it so nondescript?

Ben Spencer 00:14:34 Yeah. My first sip of wine in Sicily, that is, was just up the street from a town called Reposado. It was on the seaside. It was at an costelloe, sort of a hostel with a restaurant, and we just asked for the local wine, and the proprietor brought out a carafe. It was very yellow to orange, which I mean today would be fantastic and exciting because of the orange wine culture and craze. But to me it was a little confusing.

Ben Spencer 00:15:07 Having worked in the California wine business for five years. At that point we were very interested in making clean, pristine, crystal clear wines that spoke of a place that spoke of terroir, of a vintage, of barrels of certain yeasts and things like this, and also winds that fetched high scores and were age worthy as well. And this was a nondescript, unnamable white wine that had probably been blended It into a tank with some red grapes or with some residual wine, and it was served in a plastic cup. But when I put my mouth to it, when I put my nose to the wine, it was alive with flowers and fruit and this just wonderful liveliness. And once I tasted it, I became even more confused because it didn’t have the kind of fruit that I was used to in California. It was a little bit more active on the palate, a little bit more mineral, more savory. The acids were making my mouth flush with saliva, and I asked the proprietor, what is this? It’s fantastic.

Ben Spencer 00:16:27 And it was €2 per liter. You know, it wasn’t anything expensive, but he couldn’t answer the questions I had. He just kept saying it came from the mountain. It came from the mountain. And he probably bought it for €1 per litre from a guy who just drove a truck around, or he himself bought it cartons or jugs and served it that way. This is a long tradition on Etna. The vino da pasta. Wine for the table. Wine for food. Everybody has some vines in there in their yard. And so this tradition of just making wine as part of the diet is paramount. And for the owner of the restaurant, he was very proud of it, but he couldn’t give me any origin or any story. And it made it even more exciting because, you know, we were buying expensive barrels, we were paying exorbitant fees for stainless steel and temperature control and looking for 96 point scores. And these wines were much more exciting, even served in a plastic cup.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:32 Wow, that’s quite the experience.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:34 And can you share a story from your early days of exploring Etna Vineyards that fundamentally change your understanding of the region.

Ben Spencer 00:17:41 I approached Etna with some naivety the day after I arrived. I had already arranged to be a consulting winemaker with a local producer. When I arrived and the next day, even without any luggage, our luggage got lost. I went up to the local boutique store and bought some cheap shorts and a funny t shirt and some rubber shoes and went to work, but without knowing what to expect from the grapes. I wanted to learn from them. And so I think that approach, that naivete, that ignorance of what the grapes were, how to treat them, really gave me an entry into understanding them in a more profound way. And so now I think approaching the wines that I’m making now and the wines I’ve made over the years, allowing the vineyards here to speak about the place where the grapes grow, allowing them to tell us about the vintage. Even in some cases, what the producers themselves are going through.

Ben Spencer 00:18:46 If, for example, there’s drama in the family, or if there’s, you know.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:50 The vines are translating drama like divorce and can’t getting into the right college or whatever it’s.

Ben Spencer 00:18:57 Going on in some way. You know, there’s wines like, in every in every sense, terroir has something to do about the family and the people that are making the wine. If somebody has a bad tooth and they can’t get into the winery for a month, or a broken leg or something like that, and they can’t work the vines, there’s going to be some sort of a residual effect on what ends up in the glass in some way. And so I like to think that everything matters on that. And approaching it this way and learning from Etna has been an education in and of itself.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:35 What’s the most important thing Etna has taught you?

Ben Spencer 00:19:37 To be patient, to watch, to listen, to learn from what’s happening here and to learn from everybody. Because everybody has a different take on what’s happening here. Now.

Ben Spencer 00:19:51 There are the naturalists, there’s the minimalists, there’s the producers who invest everything in making certain kinds of wines or, you know, using certain kinds of barrels or amphora. And so everybody has a different take on what the trajectory of these wines can be, which makes it super exciting and a lot of fun because it reignites our interest in wine, in a way, because Etna really always moves outside of what we expect it to be. In the glass we see a white wine, but all of a sudden there’s white jasmine and orange flower together in the same field, and there’s this juicy fruit and Salinity and savory herbs and saltiness, and you get some repeated elements. But every place and every person has a story to tell in the wines that they’re making. And I think paying attention to this and not coming in with expectations and expecting something, rather approaching it with some acceptance and helping the producers maybe get to a point where they’re communicating these unique differences. I think is is a unique opportunity. It’s a lot of fun, but it also invites all of us as consumers into the fold and into the experience and defining what Etna is.

Ben Spencer 00:21:19 As these wines continue to make themselves seen in the marketplace. So consumers have a lot of say in this moment and what Aetna will become in the next generation. I think that’s exciting.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:32 Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned you’ve launched your own label. What is it and what are you making?

Ben Spencer 00:21:39 Well, I’m consulting with one winery right now. It’s called Punto Chico, and that translates as blind spot. It’s an American family that fell in love with Aetna over a glass of wine and came over here and found a beautiful property at the confines of the Etna Doc at 850, between 850 to 900m above sea level. And it’s been a restoration project the entire last three years. But we’ve been making just a few bottles here and there, and more or less giving them to friends because the quantities are so low. But we expect in the next few years that with a new winery and with some more plantings, we’re going to be releasing the wines more widely. They’re already attracting some attention, but I made wine in California for about a 6 to 700,000 bottle winery on the central coast of California for about ten years and also worked with exhibiting other small wineries.

Ben Spencer 00:22:39 So I had a lot of experience doing that. And now our first vintage was only 700 bottles, so it’s a lot of fun. It’s a dramatic decrease in the amount of wine, but it’s getting back to basics. It’s retraining an old vine vineyard. It’s working on a budget. It’s doing all the things that make a difference in the end. And so it’s been it’s been fun.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:03 Excellent. And what’s the biggest difference between winemaking in California and Etna? I mean, different towards different grapes. But is there anything else that stands out to you?

Ben Spencer 00:23:13 When I first started making wine in California, the winemaker sat down with the entire team and we were going over some barrel samples and trying to come up with a blend for some of the wines that we were making. It was a Bordeaux blend, and so I was looking at the wines and approaching them in my notes as if they were a Bordeaux who was a Bordeaux wine, but explaining my preference for a lighter style for, you know, 12.5% 13% alcohol, wine with dark fruit, some woods, some herbaceous qualities.

Ben Spencer 00:23:44 He said, thank you. That’s very astute. You got the wine correct, but you’re wrong. If we made that wine here in California, we would get nailed. We would get 80 points on the review. What we’re looking for is more opulence. We’re looking for more oak. We’re looking for body. We’re looking for alcohol. We’re looking for intensity of fruit. So the wines from each place can be uniquely different based on their tradition, based on their histories. And now, with Aetna being sort of at the beginning of a new wave of production just in the last 35, 40 years, we are seeing a lot of people trying to define what that is, what Aetna can be and will be. So again, there’s the naturalist, there’s the minimalist producers, there’s the big boys who have a lot of volume. There’s the people who are using amphora and or glass or cement. And so all these little tools of the trade really have an effect on the wines. So going back to the I think to the original question, what’s the difference? California had sort of established itself in the 60s and 70s, 80s as a, you know, benchmark place for making wine.

Ben Spencer 00:25:03 And Etna is now in that phase. So we’ll see here, I think pretty quickly, probably in the next generation, what Etna will become. It’s a very exciting moment to be here, to see that, to taste that on a regular basis.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:20 What do you think it’ll become?

Ben Spencer 00:25:21 I think it’ll be a study of the different elevations of the different soil types of the different contrada or the different districts where the wines are being made. But also Etna is the 10,000 foot tall cone. So there’s a lot of different aspects to mountain wind, to sunlight, to the sea breezes, to old soils, young soils. and so there’s a lot of things happening. So I think Etna will become a benchmark for variety for exciting wines made from Cara Conti. The white grape variety here, and also Narellan, is the red grape, which is made into sparkling wines, rosés and red wines, which successively. So we’re going to see a lot of variety and a lot of exciting things coming out of that. I’m happy to be here just to experience that.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:25 Be part of it. So you’ve mentioned elevation, of course, the 10,000 foot volcano. Where are vines planted? What’s the viable range? What’s too high and what’s too low?

Ben Spencer 00:26:37 So generally, the Etna doc, you can find that at mid slope from the north slope to the east, to the south in a semicircle, wrapping around and not connecting on the west. So between 400m and about 1000m above sea level. So right at that mid slope sweet spot where you have rain, you have sunlight where phylloxera is more or less nonexistent, and also where the tradition of winemaking was still present 20 years after World War two, when they actually wrote the doc laws. This sweet spot at mid slope of Etna. You do see vines outside of that zone. You do see vines very successfully producing wines up to even 1300m above sea level. On the south slope and on the north as well. But those vines are not included in the dock yet. There may be some changes to the shape and largesse of the dock, but we’ll see how that changes.

Ben Spencer 00:27:47 We currently have only about maybe 1700 hectares or about 2600 acres planted, but we have tens of thousands of acres still available for planting, so there’s a lot of space to grow. But, you know, there’s some limitations to that with regard to the Etna Park and the Unesco heritage of that, which is protecting slopes and terraces and forests and things like that. So, 400 to 1000m is the ideal spot. But there are definitely vines all over this great volcanic cone.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:28 And what’s the difference generally between vines that are grown at 400m and a thousand? Like, did they just become tighter, more acidic, more energetic perhaps, and more as opposed to any opulence would be down lower where it’s warmer. Grapes ripen.

Ben Spencer 00:28:46 More. Yeah, that’s a great question. So generally at lower elevations we’re seeing a little bit more ripeness, maybe earlier ripening a little bit more boldness in the fruit. You may even see little outcroppings of limestone or clay in some cases. But we’re talking about very early versions of clay.

Ben Spencer 00:29:08 In any case, you see more opulent wines at lower elevations. Also on the South Slope, you’re getting a little bit more development in the growing season because of the way the sun passes from the east along the south slope, the north slope, we see a little bit more deflected light, especially in the shoulder season. So early spring and fall. And so you’re getting a little bit more elegance. You’re getting younger soils in that part of the mountain. So you’re getting more stony soils as well. A little bit more structure. But even within this sort of very general description, there are outcroppings of older soils, but also very shallow coverings of young soils or sand. There is on the east slope even more rain. And so we’re seeing softer tannins in the red wines. One of the things I like to discuss with my guests and students is that Etna is is a stratovolcano, so it’s been built up over several hundred thousand years. But what that means is that we’re dealing with a lasagna of sorts.

Ben Spencer 00:30:22 I compare everything to food, so forgive me.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:25 I can understand that.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:26 How is it like lasagna?

Ben Spencer 00:30:29 So you may plant your vines in the cheese, but they’re passing through the noodle and into the spinach and into the mushroom and into the meat. Exactly. But not every vineyard is a meat lasagna. Some of them are vegan or vegetarian or a white sauce. Because of the age of the soil. Because the vibrance of the minerals that are available to the roots. And so this is again one of the complexities of Etna. It makes it maybe difficult to understand, but very exciting to taste and to experience these wines in real time in your glass.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:08 Because when the volcano erupts, lava comes down, then it hardens. That’s, I think you were saying, brings fresh soils or new soils, like it’s that new mix, at least on the top layer.

Ben Spencer 00:31:18 When we have an effusive eruption, a liquid eruption where the soils are tumbling down the slope like we see in Hawaii or another place like in Iceland.

Ben Spencer 00:31:30 That soil or that new earth won’t be available for maybe 600 years or so, depending on how fast it roads. But when sand or a pyroclastic eruption occurs and you see the big plume of smoke emitting from the top of the volcano and spreading out over the the landscape in small doses, maybe a couple centimeters, that sand can add some porosity, some drain ability to the soil, but it’s also literally fresh earth being added to the vineyard landscape. And so that can be used or utilized within a few months for the root tips. And so it’s important that you look at this in a way that it is really fresh earth, but also can be quite devastating in in large eruptions where that silica is coming down and covering the vineyard landscape.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:26 Yeah. If there’s a lot of dust or debris, would it just. Could it suffocate a vineyard? I mean, not going all the way to wiping it out with hot lava, but, like, can it just settle so heavily that it kills the vineyard?

Ben Spencer 00:32:38 Yeah, well, it can definitely suffocate the roots.

Ben Spencer 00:32:40 So, I mean, when we’re tilling the soil, we’re opening up access to oxygen for the roots in the vineyard when that is covered up with thick black volcanic sand, maybe a foot of sand in some cases, which is very rare, by the way, that can really decimate a vineyard. Not only the roots, but if that really fine glass and larger pieces of lapilli that come down tear through the roots, or I’m sorry, tear through the leaves or bruise the grape clusters, you can see some real damage, but generally speaking, the dust things are fairly light, and the volcano benefits from that on a regular basis. Especially the southeast and the east slope.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:28 Okay, cool. Now, you were the first person to offer certified courses for students interested in Aetna’s volcanic wines. Can you tell me a little bit about your study programs?

Ben Spencer 00:33:38 Sure. Etna Wine School was founded in 2012. actually, December 29th. I remember I was sitting in my chair and I was thinking, what should I do when I get to Sicily? In any case, I started very quickly when I arrived here studying the mountain, meeting the producers, looking at the contours of everything.

Ben Spencer 00:33:59 And so I started doing lectures. And those lectures are now accessible to students in several forms, either in person through winery experiences or tours. Which Etna, the entire volcano becomes the campus. Those can be short courses, half day tours, full day tours. Multi-day tours. There’s an online program that sort of coincides with that, and that’s the Aetna Wine Enthusiast program. But then there’s a more in-depth program that’s called the Aetna Wine Ambassador Program, and that includes independent study and also a week long intensive course here on Aetna, where we’re studying the wines of Sicily, but also the wines of Aetna in in their context here in the vineyards, we’re looking at the vines, how they’re grown, how the wine producers make the wines. And then at the end of the week, there’s an exam including a tasting of several wines to assess whether they are Aetna or not. Finally, there is an Aetna Scholar track, which is for Aetna ambassadors who have passed the exam successfully and they are invited back to Aetna.

Ben Spencer 00:35:16 Or they can do this from home. and the ambassadors are encouraged to come up with a research project, something about Aetna, and we work on a publishable essay article, and then work to get that published in newspapers or in journals, and then that goes into a library of study materials for anybody engaging in the Aetna ambassador program.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:47 That’s great. Comes full circle. That’s terrific. I’m sure a lot of people be interested in that, you know, especially where you can do it online from home and then eventually visit if you like. Was there a pivotal moment when you went from making, serving, teaching about wine to writing about it?

Ben Spencer 00:36:05 I think so. Yeah, I was I was making one in California, and I was invited to write an article about wine making, sort of from the novice perspective. Because at the time, I accepted a job as more or less like a cellar rat for a seasonal gig, internship, stage, whatever you’d like to call it. But it very quickly became something I loved to do, and I was asked to stay on full time to approach winemaking from a poetry degree.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:38 Fine. Lower it.

Ben Spencer 00:36:39 Yeah, right. Exactly. They go very well together. So my passion has always been writing. So for an editor to contact me and say, would you be interested in writing something about why it sort of joined the two things together? So I started writing about wine, making the technical side of it, and then was also invited to write for Gary Vaynerchuk, who at the time owned corked.

Natalie MacLean 00:37:06 Yeah, corked and wine library TV. Right?

Ben Spencer 00:37:09 Right. Exactly. Yeah. And so I was working as a sommelier, moonlighting as a sommelier in Carmel by the sea, and I was writing about the winemakers perspective of being a sommelier and what that means for education at the at the table, what it means for assessing wines when you open them. It was a lot of fun to do that, and it just sort of caught on. And so I’ve been writing about wine since 2007.

Natalie MacLean 00:37:39 Very good. Tell us in a nutshell what the new wines of Mount Etna, how the book is different from maybe other books about Etna or Sicily.

Ben Spencer 00:37:48 I think the new wines and Mount Etna is the first, or was the first book about Etna in the English language. It approaches the wine making, the grape growing, the rainbows, the light, the water flow, the history, and also the particular familial stories of everything that has been happening on Etna for the last several hundred years, including old grape varieties, the transitions between imported varieties into the Benedictine vineyards, the new super crews that are happening on the mountain today, the building of the Omnia. Everything that has to do with Etna in some aspect. For me, it was important to put that into my perspective and put it through my lens. And so there’s a lot of personal stories in there, and every page is filled with a lot of passion and a lot of fun. It was a blast to write.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:54 That’s great. Now, you mentioned rainbows. Is there a rainbow effect on wines and why?

Ben Spencer 00:39:00 Not necessarily, but this is very much the land of rainbows and the spring and the fall.

Ben Spencer 00:39:04 There are rainbows all the time. It’s. It’s fantastic to see double arches sometimes. I was driving around with a journalist and wine educator from London one day and we came around the bend high up on the mountain, and there were these thunderclouds that opened up, and there was a vertical rainbow, and it was just a very memorable moment. But with that amount of light, with that amount of moisture in the air, we have incredible intensity of light. And so the vines are benefiting from this in a lot of ways, helps with photosynthesis, with development, with phenolic ripeness. And so the rainbows are assigned perhaps that there’s a lot of light, but there’s also a lot of moisture to bounce that light around the valleys and the hills where the vineyards are planted.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:52 And what was the most surprising thing you discovered while researching or writing the book?

Ben Spencer 00:39:57 I knew that I loved this place, but I think the surprise was how many other people truly loved the place, including the people that are doing the work.

Ben Spencer 00:40:07 You know, either farmers go into the field every day, they do the work that’s necessary. But to see the excitement on everyone’s face, to see their stories coming to the page, and then to also release the book. It was very eye opening. People are learning about Etna, but also the book is written in a way that even novice learners can learn about winemaking, everything from grape growing to malolactic fermentation. MLF but also the personal stories about Aetna and how to even enjoy wine here on Aetna. It’s a new culture for wine tasting, for wine tours, and so everybody’s excited about that as well. There’s a lot happening, and I think the excitement comes from a lot of different directions. But for me it’s definitely multi-pronged.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:03 And what was the most challenging part of writing the book?

Ben Spencer 00:41:06 I think research was really tough. There’s not a lot that was written about Aetna. If we look through history, we do see a lot of books written about the politics, about the church, about, you know, the government.

Ben Spencer 00:41:22 You don’t see a lot of people writing about the garden. You don’t see a lot of people writing about their fields. And so doing that research was sort of leapfrogging from book to book, but also footnote to footnote and then those books to other books. It was a four year process. In the end, we published a book that was about 350 pages long. Now the new edition is 400 pages, but I have to cut 200 pages out of it, because it was just so much information that I was able to find in doing the research.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:56 Wow.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:02 Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with them. Here are my takeaways. Number one, how do elevation and slope influence the style of volcanic wines on Mount Etna then explains that at lower elevations he sees more ripeness, earlier ripening, and more boldness in the fruit. Conversely, you have more opulent wines at lower elevations where it’s warmer. Also, on the southern slope, you’re getting more development during the growing season of that fruit because of the ways that the sun passes from the east along the southern slope.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:35 In the northern slope, Ben says, they get a little bit more deflected light, especially on the shoulder seasons. So early spring and fall. So you’re getting more elegance. Number two, what can volcanic wine made on Mount Etna teach us about life? Ben says it teaches him and others to be patient, to watch, to listen, to learn from what’s happening and to learn from everybody, because everyone has a different take on what’s actually happening. There are naturalists, minimalists, all kinds of different producers using different kinds of barrel and amphorae on the island. Everyone has a different opinion on what the trajectory of these wines can be, which makes it really exciting and a lot of fun, and reignites Ben’s interest in wine. Because Etna always moves outside of what people expect it to be. In the glass, he says. We see a white wine, but all of a sudden there’s white jasmine or an orange flower together in the same field. There’s juicy fruit and salinity and savory herbs and saltiness. And number three, how is Mount Etna wine scene evolving, with Etna being at the beginning of a new wave of production just in the last 35, 40 years? Ben says a lot of people are trying to define what that will be.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:57 So there’s again, the naturalist, the minimalists, and he makes the comparison. California established itself in the 70s and 80s as a benchmark place for wine. Etna is now in that phase, so he’s thinking things are going to move very quickly, especially with the new generation of winemakers. And it’ll be a study of different elevations, different soil types, districts. Mount Etna also is a ten zero zero zero foot tall cone. So there’s a lot of different aspects to mountain wind, sunlight, sea breezes, old soils, young soils. He thinks that now will become a benchmark for variety, for exciting wines made from Kerry County, from the white grape grown there, but also neuromuscular as the red, which is being made into sparkling wines, rosé and red wines quite successfully. In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Ben, links to his website, book and Wine School, the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now, no matter where you live.

Natalie MacLean 00:45:03 If you missed episode 164, go back and take a listen. I chat about Southern Italy’s wine, food and flavor with Robert Camuto. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.

Robert Camuto 00:45:17 Wine back in the day wasn’t something that it is now. It was an accompaniment. It wasn’t the star of the table. When you look at southern Italy, there’s so many darn flavors there and so much delicious spicy food. And fresh tomatoes, peppers, greens, artichokes. Maybe it’s a little more difficult for wine to be the standout star of that.

Natalie MacLean 00:45:42 Because.

Natalie MacLean 00:45:43 The flavors are so intense.

Robert Camuto 00:45:45 There’s so much else going on at the table, so much other intensity. Everybody loves Burgundy, but what does one eat in Burgundy? There’s some nice buff bourguignon, there’s some nice snails. But it’s not the same thing as having pasta with sea urchins and clams and peppers and all the different sources. They drank it as a food, as a very simple pairing, and did not savor wine to the extent that we do today.

Natalie MacLean 00:46:18 You won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Ben. If you liked this episode or learned even one thing from it, please email or tell a friend about the podcast this week, especially someone you know who be interested in learning more about volcanic wines. It’s easy to find the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, their favorite podcast app, or they can listen to the show on my website at Natalie MacLean. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode, or if you’ve read my books or are listening to them. Email me at Natalie at Natalie MacLean dot com. In the show notes, you’ll find a link to take a free online food and wine pairing class with me called the Five Wine and Food pairing mistakes that can ruin your dinner and how to fix them forever at Natalie MacLean. And that’s all in the show notes at Natalie MacLean. Three. Five. Two. Thank you for taking the time to join me here.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:20 I hope something great is in your glass this week. Perhaps a volcanic wine that makes an explosive impression on your palate. Boom.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:34 You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at Natalie MacLean dot com. Subscribe. Meet me here next week. Cheers.