Touch Hunger

By Neel Burton | June 30, 2017

hugging

I ain’t lookin’ for prayers or pity/ I ain’t comin’ round searchin’ for a crutch/ I just want someone to talk to/ And a little of that human touch. —Bruce Springsteen, Human Touch

Convicted murderer Peter Collins died of cancer after 32 years in a Canadian prison. In that time, he became a champion of prison rights, and made a short film called Fly in the Ointment about a prolonged period that he spent in solitary confinement:

Somehow, I felt [my wife’s] fingers on my leg. Shocked and excited, I opened my eyes only to realize it was a fly walking on me. I was greedy for human touch so I closed my eyes and pretended it was her fingers. I tried to stay perfectly still because I didn’t want to frighten the fly off and be left alone.

After that, Collins would bite his cheek and apply a mixture of his own blood and saliva onto his skin to attract the flies that had become his only source of living touch.

Owing to smaller household sizes, greater migration, higher media consumption, and longer life expectancy, people today are more isolated than at any other time in human history. Just like we crave food when we are hungry, and crave sleep when we are tired, so we crave touch when we are or feel alone. When someone is no longer in our orbit, we do not say that we are out of sight, or out of hearing, but out of touch. Maybe we feel that we ought to make contact. More than a mere indulgence, human touch is, like food and sleep, a visceral but neglected need that is increasingly being met by third parties such as massage therapists and even professional cuddlers.

As a wine taster, I thought that smell was the most neglected of our senses. But in our society touch is even more so. In the 1960s, Sidney Jourard, a psychologist at the University of Florida, observed the behaviour of couples in coffee shops around the world. He found that, in the space of an hour, couples in Puerto Rico touched each other 180 times. This compared to 110 times in Paris, just twice in Florida, and not at all in London. Jourard also found that French parents and their children touched three times more than their American counterparts.

The fear of touch in northern, English-speaking countries is deep-seated. In Victorian England and 19th century America, people took to the language of flowers, or floriography, to express feelings that could not otherwise be expressed. In a book on child rearing, first published in 1928, the influential American psychologist John B. Watson advised:

Never hug and kiss [your children], never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight … In a week’s time you will find how easy it is to be perfectly objective with your child and at the same time kindly. You will be utterly ashamed at the mawkish, sentimental way you have been handling it.

Still today, many people flinch if the person returning their change accidentally brushes their hand. Generally speaking, the fear of touch is much greater in men. Touch is seen as soft and effeminate, and many men are keen to appear macho or at least masculine. With women, they fear that their touch will be interpreted as a sexual advance. With other men, they fear that it will raise doubts about their sexuality, or that it will feel awkward, or that it will be rejected, or that they might enjoy it a little too much. With children, with many schools now operating a strict no-touch policy, they fear that it could raise suspicions of paedophilia. So with the exception of handshakes and the occasional awkward ‘man hug’, men must forego touch, especially warm, intimate touch, simply to reassure everyone, and perhaps also themselves, that they are decent, manly men.

As they grow out of the warm embrace of their parents, boys try to meet their need for touch through rough interaction with other boys. As they grow older, they may fumble into a relationship, limiting any physical contact to just one other person. This puts a lot of pressure on their partner and relationship. It also reinforces the ambiguation between touch and sex. Our libido can be assuaged with our own hand in a way that our craving for touch cannot: as every sex worker knows, many people who think they are hungry for sex are in fact hungry for skin. But it is possible to separate the two, even with people to whom we feel sexually attracted.

Pixbay — For men, outside of a sexual relationship, the only touch that is condoned is that between a father and his very young childen.

To undermine the taboos surrounding it, I’m going to build a positive case for touch. Touch is probably the most primitive of all the senses. It is the first sense to develop, and is already present from just eight weeks of gestation. With a surface area, in adults, of around two square metres, our skin is the largest organ in our body. In a controversial experiment going back to the 1950s, the psychologist Harry Harlow offered maternally deprived infant Rhesus macaques a choice of two inanimate surrogate mothers made of wire and wood: one bare, and the other covered in cloth. The monkeys preferred the cloth-covered surrogate to the bare one, even when the bare one was holding a bottle of food. In 1994, the neurobiologist Mary Carlson, one of Harlow’s former students, travelled to Romania with the psychiatrist Felton Earls to study the effects of severe deprivation on the decretei children abandoned in understaffed orphanages. Typical findings included muteness, blank facial expressions, social withdrawal, and bizarre stereotypic movements, behaviours very similar to those of socially deprived macaques and chimpanzees. Recent studies have reinforced the importance of childhood physical contact, which has been associated with, among others, better performance on cognitive and physical tests, a stronger immune system, and reduced aggression. All else being equal, premature infants that receive a course of massage therapy gain considerably more weight and spend less time in hospital.

In adults, the benefits of gentle touch include: reducing stress and even protecting against it, lifting mood and self-esteem, strengthening interpersonal bonds, improving cognitive function, and boosting immune function. These effects are mediated by hormonal changes, including a lowering of the stress hormone cortisol and the release of the ‘love hormone’ oxytocin. The benefits of touch accrue to the giver as well as the receiver, as it is impossible to touch without also being touched. Even self-massage reduces stress levels, which probably explains why we are constantly touching ourselves: wringing our hands, rubbing our forehead, brushing our hair and scalp, stroking our neck and upper back, and so on. Even masturbation may be more about touch and stress than about lust itself: in a recent survey by TimeOut New York, 39% of office workers admitted to masturbating in the workplace. Compared to children, adults are less dependent on touch, but older adults, who tend to be more vulnerable, more alone, and more self-aware, are likely to need considerably more skin contact than their younger counterparts. Therapy animals have become a common in care homes, and, despite the taboo, I think residents should be encouraged to hold hands or rub each other’s shoulders.

Just as we use speech and gestures to communicate, so we use touch. Words can say, ‘I love you’, but touch can also say how and how much, and also, ‘I respect you’, ‘I need you’, and ‘thank you’. For a long time, scientists, being scientists, thought that touch served merely to emphasize a verbal message. But now it is clear that touch can be the message, and that it can be more nuanced and sophisticated than either speech or gestures, and more economical to boot. What’s more, touch is a two-way street, and a person’s reaction to our touch can tell us far more about them than their words ever could. Finally, while words can lie, or be taken for granted, primal touch is hard to either ignore or discount.

Touch can also serve to convince and motivate, so long, of course, as it is natural and appropriate. One study found that two-thirds of women agreed to dance with a man who touched her on the arm while making the request. When the man kept his hands by his side, his success rate fell by half. Students who, upon returning a library book, had their hand brushed by a librarian reported higher levels of satisfaction with the library and life in general, even if they had not been aware of having been touched. NBA teams with players who touched one another more, for example, by high-fiving or hugging during a game, went on to win more games, with the more touchy players doing best. Students who had been touched by a teacher tended to participate more in class activities, patrons who had been touched by a waitress tended to tip more generously, shoppers who had been touched by a store greeter tended to spend more money, and so on and so forth.

As a psychiatrist, I try to shake hands with all my patients, and often use comforting touch in moments of distress, almost invariably to very good effect. Touch not only calms the patient but also makes her feel that she has been seen and heard, and builds a bond of trust. It makes her, and me, feel more human, and, as a result, I think, we remember each other.

References:

Peter Collins, Fly in the Ointment. Retrieved from http://www.solitarywatch.com. Posted on 13 July 2015.
Watson JB & Watson RA (1928): Psychological Care of Infant and Child. WW Norton & Company, Inc.
Carlson M and Earls F (1999): Psychological and endocrinological sequelae of early social deprivation in institutionalized children in Romania. Chapter in The Integrative Neurobiology of Affiliation, edited by Carol Sue Carter et al.
Jillian Anthony for TimeOut New York: 39 percent of your coworkers masturbate at the office, according to our survey. Posted on 21 December 2015.
Kraus MW et al (2010): Tactile communication, cooperation, and performance: an ethological study of the NBA. Emotion 10(5):745-9.
Cruso AH & Wetzel CG (1984): The Midas touch: The effects of interpersonal touch on restaurant tipping. Personality an Social Psychology Bulletin 10:512-517.
Guéguen N (2004): Nonverbal encouragement of participation in a course: the effect of touching. Social Psychology of Education 7:89-98.
Stephen R & Zweigenhaft R (1985): The effect on tipping of a waitress touching male and female customers. Journal of Social Psychology 126:141-142.
Hornik, J (1992): Tactile stimulation and consumer response. Journal of Consumer Research 19:449-158.

A Short History of Love

By Neel Burton | June 24, 2017

lovehx

So I’m thanking you today because of you I am now me. —John Butler Trio, Fool for You

In the fifth century BC, the Greek philosopher Empedocles held that there are four primordial elements: air, earth, fire, and water. These elements are driven together and apart by the opposed cosmic principles of Love and Strife. Love brings the elements together, and unopposed Love leads to ‘The One’, a divine and resplendent sphere. Strife gradually degrades the sphere, returning it to the elements, and this cosmic cycle repeats itself ad infinitum. According to legend, Empedocles killed himself by leaping into the flames of Mount Etna, either to prove that he was immortal or to make people believe that he was.

Empedocles may have conceived of love as a great cosmic principle, but it is in fact Plato who transformed it into the spiritual, transcendental, and redemptory force that it has become. Before Plato, and for a long time after, some people did, of course, fall in love, but they did not believe that their love might in some sense save them. When, in Homer’s Iliad, Helen eloped with Paris, neither she nor he thought of their attraction as pure or noble or elevating. The Greeks recognized several types of love: the one that most approaches our modern concept of romantic love is eros, or passionate love. Rather than celebrating eros, Greek myth sees it as a kind of madness induced by one of Cupid’s arrows. The arrow breaches us and we ‘fall’ in love, often with disastrous consequences such as, well, the Trojan War. In the Antigone of Sophocles, the chorus sings: ‘Love… whoever feels your grip is driven mad… you wrench the minds of the righteous into outrage, swerve them to their run…’ In Homer’s Odyssey, despite her many suitors, Penelope remains faithful to her husband Odysseus. But her commitment is better understood in terms of dutiful love, or connubial fidelity, than modern, madcap romantic love. In the last resort, when Odysseus returns and slaughters all the suitors, Penelope is reluctant even to recognize him.

Plato’s Symposium (4th century BC) contains a myth about the origins of human love. Once upon a time, there were three kinds of people: male, descended from the sun; female, descended from the earth; and hermaphrodite, with both male and female parts, descended from the moon. These early people were completely round, each with four arms and four legs, two identical faces on opposite sides of a head with four ears, and all else to match. They walked both forwards and backwards, and ran by turning cartwheels on their eight limbs, moving in circles like their parents the planets. They were powerful and unruly, and seeking to scale the heavens. So Zeus, the father of the gods, cut them into two ‘like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling’, and even threatened to cut them into two again, so that they might hop on one leg. After that, people searched all over for their other half. When they finally found it, they wrapped themselves around it very tightly and did not let go. This is the origin of our desire for others: those of us who desire members of the opposite sex used to be hermaphrodites, whereas men who desire men used to be male, and women who desire women used to be female. When we find our other half (the expression descends from Plato’s myth), we are ‘lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy’ that cannot be accounted for by a simple drive for sex, but by a desire to be whole again and restored to our original nature.

Later in Plato’s Symposium, Socrates relates a conversation that he once had with the priestess Diotima, from whom he supposedly learnt the art of love. According to Diotima, a youth should be taught to love one beautiful body so that he comes to realize that this beautiful body shares beauty with other beautiful bodies, and thus that it is foolish to love just one beautiful body. In loving all beautiful bodies, the youth comes to understand that the beauty of the soul is superior to that of the body, and begins to love those who are beautiful in soul regardless of whether they are also beautiful in body. Once he has transcended the physical, he discovers that beautiful practices and customs and the various kinds of knowledge also share in a common beauty. Finally, arriving at the summit of the ladder of love, he is able to experience Beauty itself, rather than its various apparitions. By exchanging the various apparitions of virtue for Virtue itself, he gains immortality and the love of the gods.

Although Plato’s model eventually gained the upper hand, other models of love in antiquity are the perfect friendship of Plato’s one-time student Aristotle, and the naturalism of the Roman poets Lucretius and Ovid. For Aristotle, friendships founded on advantage alone, or pleasure alone, are as nothing to those founded on virtue. To be in such a friendship, and to seek out the good of one’s friend, is to exercise reason and virtue, which is the distinctive function of human beings, and which amounts to happiness. In a virtuous friendship, our friend is as another self, and to seek out his good is also to seek out our own. Unfortunately, the number of people with whom one can sustain a perfect friendship is very small, first, because reason and virtue are not to be found in everyone (never, for instance, in young people, who are not wise enough to be virtuous), and, second, because perfect friendship can only be formed and sustained if the pair of friends spend a great deal of exclusive time investing into each other.

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of their own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good—and goodness is an enduring thing.

A paragon of perfect friendship, albeit from a very different time and place, is that between the essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) and the humanist Etienne de la Boétie (1530-1563). They became the closest friends from the moment they met at a feast in Bordeaux. Montaigne wrote that friendship, ‘having seized my whole will, led it to plunge and lose itself in his.’ ‘Our souls mingle and blend with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them, and cannot find it again.’ He struggled to explain this enthrallment: ‘If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than it was because he was he, and I was I.’ The young men had much in common, including their privileged backgrounds, soaring intellects, and refined sensibilities. Perhaps more importantly, they shared a devotion to classical and Aristotelian ideals of the good life, which had prepared the ground in which their friendship could blossom into one so fine that ‘it is a lot if fortune can do it once in three centuries’. In a sonnet, la Boétie declaimed: ‘You have been bound to me, Montaigne, both by the power of nature and by virtue, which is the sweet allurement of love.’ The married Montaigne never fully recovered from la Boétie’s premature death from the plague, and for the rest of his life felt like ‘no more than a half person’. No one, he warned, should ever be ‘joined and glued to us so strongly that they cannot be detached without tearing off our skin and some part of our flesh as well.’ Compared to the four years of friendship with la Boétie, the rest of his life seemed ‘but smoke and ashes, a night dark and dreary’. It is sobering to think that, had the Aristotelian template not been available, and socially condoned, their friendship may never have flown. Love, like madness, can only fill the models that society makes available.

Lucretius (99-55 BC) and Ovid (43 BC-17/18 AD) did not idealize love, seeing it neither as a track to transcendence, like Plato, nor a vehicle of virtue, like Aristotle. Instead, they thought of it merely as thinly garbed animal instinct, a kind of insanity that could nonetheless be enjoyed if tamed by reason and sublimed into art. ‘Love,’ said Ovid, ‘is a thing ever filled with anxious fear.’ Pauperibus vates ego sum, quia pauper amavi: ‘I am the poet of the poor, for I was poor when I loved.’ The modern heirs to Lucretius and Ovid are Schopenhauer, and, later, Freud and Proust. In his masterwork, The World as Will (1819), Schopenhauer argues that beneath the world of appearances lies the world of will, a fundamentally blind process of striving and reproduction. Everything in the world is a manifestation of will, including the human body: the genitals are objectified sexual impulse, the mouth and digestive tract objectified hunger, and so on. Even our higher faculties have evolved for no other purpose than to help us meet the demands of will. The most powerful manifestation of will is the impulse for sex. The will-to-life of the yet unconceived offspring draws man and woman together in a shared delusion of lust and love. But with the task accomplished, the delusion dies and they return to their ‘original narrowness and neediness’.

On the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, the Jewish and Christian models of love developed alongside the classical models. In Genesis 22, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. But as Abraham is about to slay Isaac, an angel stays his hand: ‘now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.’ It is true that the Old Testament instructs us to love God (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) and to love our neighbours (Leviticus 19:18). However, the Binding of Isaac underlines that, although love and morality are important principles, unquestioning obedience or allegiance to God is more important still, for God is morality, and God is love. In contrast, the New Testament elevates love into the supreme virtue and commingles it with life and death. More than a commandment, love becomes the royal road to redemption: ‘He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.’ One must even turn the other cheek to love one’s enemies: ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.’ Jesus may have spoken Greek, and might have come under the direct or indirect influence of Platonism. Whether or not he did, over the centuries, the Church doctors sought to align Christian theology with classical philosophy, especially Platonism; and Christian love, more properly called charity, and ultimately aimed at God, blurred with something much more self-oriented.

The blending of Christian love and Platonism laid the ground for the troubadour tradition that began in late 11th century Occitania (broadly, the southern half of France). A troubadour extolled refined or courtly love, which he directed at a married and unavailable lady, often of a superior social rank, as a means of exalting himself and attaining to a higher virtue, notably by carrying out a succession of chivalrous acts or tests. For the first time in the Judeo-Christian tradition, love, insofar as courtly love can count as love, did not ultimately aim at, or depend upon, God, and the Church duly declared it a heresy. In a significant cultural reversal, the daughter of Eve, although in this context an essentially passive and interchangeable idol, turned from devilish temptress or object of contempt to sublime conduit of virtue, a goddess in the place of God. The troubadour tradition, which had remained an elite and minority movement, died out around the time of the Black Death in 1348.

Saint Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) taught that nature is the mirror of God. Although a reforming Christian, his Canticle of the Creatures comes across as almost pagan in inspiration: ‘Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, especially through my lord Brother Sun, who brings the day; and you give light through hi. And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendour! Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.’ In the next period, God gradually comes down to earth, to be worshipped through his creation, and, above all, through the human body. This, in any case, served as justification for all those Renaissance nudes, first among them Michelangelo’s magisterial statue of David (1504) which the Florentines displayed at the political and historical heart of their city in the Piazza della Signoria. One could admire David, or anyone else for that matter, as the mirror of God, but, for just that reason, one could not turn him into an object of lust. God’s earthly descend ends with the Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), who thought of God and nature as one and the same. More precisely, Spinoza brought nature into God, thereby, in some sense, eliminating or radically redefining him: ‘Whatsoever is, is in God… God is the indwelling, and not the transient cause of all things.’

As God retreated from love, Platonism, which had been lurking in the background, stepped forward to fill the void. Abraham had surrendered himself and his son Isaac out of devotion to God. But in the Romantic era, love became all the opposite: a means of finding and validating oneself. ‘So I’m thanking you today because of you I am now me.’ In the time of God, finding oneself—or, more accurately, losing oneself in God—had required years of patient spiritual practice, but, after the French Revolution, romantic love could save almost anyone, and with very little investment on their part. Plato’s ladder of love had been an elitist project designed to sublime sexual desire into virtue, but the Romantics, concerned with neither God nor reason, held that love with a good and beautiful person could only intensify sexual desire. The sacred seeped out of God and into love, and, with more success than reason, progress, communism, or any other -ism, love took the place of the dying religion in lending weight and meaning and texture to our lives. People had once loved God, but now they loved love: more than with their beloved, they, like the troubadours before them, fell in love with love itself.

References:

Sophocles, Antigone. Trans. Robert Fagles.
Plato, Symposium. Trans. Benjamin Jowett.
Aristotle, Nicomachen Ethics VIII. Trans. WD Ross.
Montaigne, Michel de, On Friendship. Translated by Donald Frame.
Boétie, Etienne de la, as quoted in Bakewell S (2011): A life of Montaigne… p92. Vintage Books.
Ovid, The Heroines. Trans. G Showerman.
Ovid, The Art of Love II. Trans. J Lewis May.
Schopenhauer A (1819), The World as Will and Representation.
Bible: Genesis 22:12 (KJV).
Bible: John 3:14-15 (KJV).
Bible: Matthew 5:44 (KJV).
St Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Creatures. Trans. Franciscan Friars Third Order Regular.
Spinoza, Baruch (1677): Ethics I, 15 & 18.

The Wines of Sicily

By Neel Burton | June 3, 2017

vrucara

According to myth, it is Dionysus who brought the vine to Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean and largest region of Italy. Over the centuries, the Island of the Three Capes has been settled or controlled by, among others, the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, and Spanish. Traces of this rich and unique heritage are still evident in the local dialects, architectures, and gastronomies. Caesar’s favourite wine was Mamertine, from the area of Messina, not least because the Mamertines (‘sons of Mars’) had played a big part in the eventual defeat of Carthage. In Palermo’s archaeological museum, I admired a 2nd century stone sarcophagus in the shape of a lenòs, or tank for treading grapes.

Sicily offers close to ideal conditions for viticulture, with a varied and often rugged terrain, and hot, dry, sun-drenched summers. In the 20th century, this led to some very high yields, which have been dramatically curtailed by an increasing number of quality-conscious producers. In the last three decades, Sicily has morphed from bulk producer into one of Europe’s most distinct, intricate, and vibrant wine regions. This year, Angelo Gaja himself purchased 21ha on Etna. Although there are more than 20 Sicilian DOCs, many are rarely seen, especially on the export market. Outside certain pockets such as Cerasuolo di Vittoria, Etna, Marsala, and Pantelleria, most wine is labelled Sicilia DOC or the more versatile IGP Terre Siciliane, which cover the entire region.

The most notable black grape varieties in Sicily are the indigenous Nero d’Avola and Nerello Mascalese. Nero d’Avola originated in the southeast but has spread out to become Sicily’s signature variety. More substantial examples are compared to New World Shiraz, dark and full-bodied with fine tannins and notes of plum, mulberry, and chocolate. Leading examples such as Milazzo’s Duca di Montalbo, Feudo Montoni’s Vrucara (pictured above), and Planeta’s Santa Cecilia are balanced, complex, and long-lived, and much in the same league as Taurasi and Aglianico del Vulture.

In the southeastern region of Vittoria, Nero d’Avola is blended with the delicate and aromatic Frappato (30-50% of the blend) to produce Cerasuolo di Vittoria, Sicily’s only DOCG. Cerasuolo means ‘cherry-like’, and the blend can be reminiscent of quality Beaujolais. COS is a top producer of Cerasuolo, and also crafts the blend in amphorae, resulting in a fresher, more persistent style.

Nerello Mascalese is indigenous to Mount Etna. May is a good time to visit: in contrast to the rest of Sicily, which is more or less calcareous, the slopes of the smoking volcano are black with fertility, creating an ideal backdrop for genista, euphorbia, and other bright blooms. The most notable viticultural agglomeration, with its north-facing slopes and sealed-off continental climate, is the Northern Valley, across the villages of Randazzo, Passopisciaro, and Castiglione di Sicilia. The terroir is divided into named areas, or contrade, such as Feudo di Mezzo, Guardiola, and Calderara Sottana, defined by such factors as elevation, aspect, and—this being Etna—lava type. Some contrade, such as Rampante at 1,000m, are, perversely, too altitudinous to claim the DOC. Pockets of old bush (albarello) vines are highly sought-after, despite the expense of rehabilitating, farming, and maintaining stone terraces. The Etna DOC calls for Nerello Mascalese, sometimes in a blend with the rustic Nerello Cappuccio. The wines are fresh, delicate, and mineral, inviting comparisons with Burgundy or Barolo. Despite later harvests, crus from the Northern Valley are more herbal and structured than those from the south, which are broader and spicier. Comparing Nerello Mascalese to Pinot Noir, both from the same Etna producer, the Pinot Noir was fuller with more blue fruit but less earthy spice.

Etna bianco calls for Carricante, sometimes in a blend with other grapes, especially Catarratto. Carricante can be reminiscent of Chablis in its acidity, minerality, and texture, but with more mandarin than lemon and an herbal note. Benanti’s Pietramarina, a 100% Carricante from the eastern village of Milo (the only village that can claim the superiore), is one of Italy’s few age-worthy white wines.

Faro DOC, produced to the north in the calcareous hills overlooking the Strait of Messina, is a similar blend to Etna DOC, but also includes the indigenous Nocera, which contributes acidity. From the vineyards above Faro Superiore (superhuman driving skills required), you can, on a clear day, just about make out the Aeolian Islands, which are noted for Malvasia delle Lipari DOC, especially the passito, which Guy de Maupassant called a sirop de soufre … le vin du diable.

faro superiore — Bonavita’s tiny parcels above Faro Superiore, with Stromboli on the horizon

In terms of volume, the west of Sicily is much more important than the east, and, like Sicily as a whole, dominated by white wines. Catarratto, the principal variety, is one of the ten fortified marsala grapes (although high-end producers prefer the traditional Grillo and Inzolia), and also the major component of Bianco d’Alcamo DOC. Most Catarratto is bland and blousy, but, with strict yield control and skilful winemaking, examples from higher slopes can be crisp and mineral with notes of lemon and flowers or herbs. Two notable producers in Marsala are Marco de Bartoli and Nino Barraco, who champion the unfortified, unsweetened ‘Marsalas’ that were being made before the arrival, in the late 18th century, of English wine merchant John Woodhouse.

Wine is also made in the centre of Sicily, in all sorts of styles. G. Milazzo in the area of Agrigento even makes hand-riddled traditional method sparkling Chardonnay: the top Federico II cuvée spends seven years on lees, and, despite the heat, wins medal upon medal. Across Sicily, there is a secondary focus on international varieties such as Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and especially Syrah, which is well suited to the Sicilian climate. These international varieties played an important role in attracting attention to Sicily as a quality producer, but are now somewhat less fashionable. Blending, including between indigenous and international varieties, is common practice.

Moscato and Malvasia are made into passitos all over Sicily, but the most notable passitos, Moscato di Pantelleria DOC and Malvasia delle Lipari DOC, are made on outlying islands. Moscato di Pantelleria is made from Zibbibo (Muscat of Alexandria) on Pantelleria (the name derives from the Arabic Bent el-Rhia, ‘daughter of the wind’), 60km east of the Tunisian coast. Some of the best examples are Donnafugata’s Ben Ryé and Marco de Bartoli’s Bukkuram and exquisite Padre de la Vigna.

Favourite producers are Marco de Bartoli (Marsala and Pantelleria), Nino Barraco (Marsala), Feudo Montoni (Centre), and Tenuta di Fessina (Etna). Other top producers include, on the smaller side, Bonavita (Faro), Benanti, Calabretta, Frank Cornelissen, Girolamo Russo, Passopisciaro, and Terre Nere (the latter six all on Etna); and, on the larger side, COS, Cusumano, Donnafugata, Milazzo, Morgante, Planeta, and Tasca d’Almerita. COS, Milazzo, and Morgante are in the centre of Sicily, while Cusumano, Donnafugata, Planeta, and Tasca d’Almerita are more or less pan-Sicilian.

Neel Burton is author of The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting