WhiteLead grape in 2
Grillo
Sicily's best white grape for dry wine, grown in the west around Marsala and Trapani. It holds acid in serious heat, which almost nothing else there does, and gives citrus peel, fennel and a saline finish with real body. Picked early it is taut and lean; picked later it goes broad and tropical, and the early picking is the version worth drinking.
Worth knowing
It is not ancient. It was bred in the nineteenth century, a crossing of Catarratto and Zibibbo, and it was made for Marsala, where its sugar and its resistance to oxidation suited a fortified wine. Its career as a dry white is barely thirty years old.
Where it is allowed8 appellations