It’s a bright, late-September morning on the arid southern slopes of Sicily’s Mount Etna, and Gaia Gaja is walking the vineyards of her family’s latest wine adventure. With her is the Gajas’ partner here, Etna winemaker Alberto Aiello Graci.
The sleek, year-old winery for their joint venture, called Idda, is set into a hillside with unobstructed views of Etna’s fuming peak in one direction and the parched low hills and valleys of Sicily in the other. On the vines, bunches of ripe, golden Carricante grapes hang just days before picking. Every few yards, the black soils underfoot change in a tumble of volcanic sand, gravel and lavastone.
“All the other places where we make wine are places where there is clay and limestone,” says Gaia, 45, eldest of Italian wine legend Angelo Gaja’s three children. “Here there is no clay. There is no limestone. There are ashes, pebbles—everything is volcanic.”
“From vine to vine, the soils change a lot,” she adds.
A Different Scene on the Southern Side
Now in its eighth vintage, Idda (Sicilian for “she” and a nickname for Etna) is hitting its stride with the new winery, a dedicated winemaker for the project and positive reception for its two wines: an Etna Rosso and a Sicilia Bianco. In Wine Spectator blind tastings, four wines from vintages 2019 to 2022 have scored 91–93 points, or “outstanding.”
What’s more, the Gajas and Graci are beginning to understand their vineyards and establish a style on Etna’s lesser-known south-southwestern face.
This part of the mountain—the hottest and driest—seems the most ruggedly Sicilian. It’s a stark contrast to the cool mountain clime of the north face, with its varied, crenulated topography and smaller vineyards focused primarily on Nerello Mascalese-based reds, as well as to Etna’s mild, rainy southeastern slopes facing the Ionian Sea, which are prized for Carricante whites.
Here, the landscape changes: The stands of monumental chestnut and oak on other parts of the mountain give way to low scrub and prickly pear cactus. The vineyard mixes are less mannered, ranging from Carricante and Nerello to old field blends and some international varieties dating back to the 19th century.
“To do something in this part of Etna was a challenge—a tightrope walk,” says Graci. “In the north, everything was done, organized. The best properties were bought. Here it is virgin. There are a lot of growers, but few wineries. It is less known and less prestigious.”
Angelo Gaja's Arrival
How Idda came together is a story of curiosity, climate and contrarianism from a pair of enterprising winemakers.
Now in his 80s, Gaja has been an engine of Italian wine quality from his native Piedmont over the last half century, expanding in the 1990s to Tuscany’s Bolgheri and Montalcino appellations. Graci, 49, is the scion of a Sicilian landowning family, who left his banking job to become part of Etna’s explosive new wave of winemaking (on the north face) in 2004.
Gaja had first come to Etna’s vineyards in the late 1990s with the visionary enologist who helped lead Italy’s wine renaissance, Giacomo Tachis.
“Tachis said, ‘Angelo, what are you doing going to Bolgheri?’” Gaia recounts. ““This is the place to come.’”
“Angelo was very impressed,” she continues. “You know when you come here it is a place that you keep thinking of. It gets under your skin. But he was absolutely not ready to start something here by himself.”
Things had changed by the time Angelo returned in 2015.
His children had taken over operations of the family wineries, and he was in a mood to expand—particularly to high-altitude terroirs that could buffer some aspects of climate change.
“It’s 20 years that Angelo is only thinking about climate change,” Gaia says with a laugh. “He believes that farmers can find ways to adapt. He believes in starting new projects and was looking for areas that are higher in altitude, with late-ripening varieties. So obviously, Etna is a place that that came to his mind.”
During a subsequent trip there in early 2016, Graci suggested Gaja do something on Etna. Gaja countered that they should do something together.
“When he got back home, he was very excited about what he had seen, the people that he had met, and he was ready. He was hooked,” Gaia says. “And Alberto also impressed Angelo.”
As the men talked and bonded, they agreed that they should break new winemaking ground. Graci was eager to explore the hotter south-southwestern slopes of the mountain primarily for white wines. “Carricante from here has more generosity and more aromatic impact,” Graci says. “It’s more Mediterranean.”
Getting Started
Their original purchase included 51 acres in Biancavilla, about seven miles west of the new Idda winery, at an elevation of 2,600 feet. The site’s roughly 27 acres of vineyards are a mix of Nerello Mascalese and Carricante. A year later, the partners purchased these other 51 acres here in Belpasso, at about 2,000 feet; some of the land was planted to Carricante and the rest to olive trees in stony soils that have since been cleared to make way for a total of 30 acres of Carricante now in production.
The first red was produced in 2017, with the white added the following vintage. Both were made at Graci’s winery in Passopisciaro until 2023 when operations moved to Idda’s new winery with Sicilian enologist Antonio La Fata, 29, at the helm.
Much of the land in Belpasso lies outside the boundaries of the Etna DOC. For this reason, Idda’s white wine carries the island-wide Sicilia appellation. “The appellation [designation] is not something that we cared about,” says Graci. “It is still Etna wine.”
The operations of Idda are freewheeling and collegial. Graci confers frequently by phone with Angelo, Gaia and her siblings. “Every one of them is involved in everything,” says Graci of the Gaja family. “They all know everything that’s happening. What I love about this relationship is that they really run a family business.”
Read Robert Camuto Meets… on Nov. 19 for Part II to learn more about Idda’s role in Etna’s white wine wave.
