The Sicily Blog

Sicily’s ancient peoples - the Sicanians, Sicels, Elymians - - are lost to antiquity, but her ancient wine culture thrives, connecting Sicily’s past and present to the future. Beginning about 800 B.C., Sicily’s central location in the Mediterranean Sea landed her in the international mainstream.
Dionysus, God of Wine, shepherded the grape from Greece to Sicily - it is said - conveniently just ahead of Greek settlement of the island, circa 500 B.C. In 300 B.C., Roman historian Varrone documented 50 varieties of grapes planted throughout the island. Arabs arrived in the 800s A.D. and founded the city of Mars el’Allah, (literally "Port of Allah"), modern-day Marsala, made world-famous in the 1700s for its sweet fortified wine and countless chicken recipes.

A pioneer of another sort discovered Sicily during the modern world’s wine boom. In 1972, Anthony J. Terlato, scion of Lake Bluff-based Terlato Wines International was intrigued by a bottle of the Sicilian brand Corvo, he ordered in a Rome ristorante. More >>

A friend gave me a book, Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons, a couple of weeks ago and I have to say that I am really enjoying it…

‘Sicily struck me
then as the most fascinating place I had ever visited. I didn’t change that opinion over the intervening years, no matter where I travelled. I meant to go back. Time and again I made plans. Time and again I was thwarted.’At the age of twenty-six Matthew Fort first visited the island of Sicily. He and his brother arrived in 1973 expecting sun, sea and good food, but they were totally unprepared for the lifelong effect of this most extraordinary of islands. Thirty years later, older and a bit wiser - but no less greedy - Matthew finally returns. Travelling round the island on his scooter, Monica, he samples exquisite antipasti in rundown villages, delicate pastries in towns that clung to the edge of vertical hillsides, and goes fishing for anchovies beneath a star-scattered sky. Once again this enigmatic island casts its spell, and Matthew rediscovers its beauty, the intensity of its flavours, and finds himself digging into the darkness of Sicily’s past as well as
some mysteries of his own.

Michelle Di Bartolo told her mother at the tender age of 14 she wasn’t going to school any more, she was going to be a writer

”We fought back and forth with her saying she wasn’t going and me insisting she did. Eventually she went back to school,” says Di Bartolo’s mother, Rosita.

Eighteen years later, Di Bartolo has realised her dream, with her first book, The Sicilian Kitchen due out next month.

Read more at News.com.au