When it comes to wines from Sicily, nearly everyone has heard of nero d’avola, the Italian island’s most important and popular red grape. Nero d’avola offers pleasingly spicy and plump fruit flavors, and it pairs with a wide range of foods.
But at a recent tasting in San Francisco of Sicilian wines, I shifted my focus to the whites, and the most common whites in the room were made from grillo. Not all the wines on offer were worth recommending, but there were some excellent bottles, and they were affordably priced.
Grillo plantings are mostly concentrated in western Sicily. The grape is the variety traditionally used in marsala, though grillo dry table wines are now common. The most interesting examples display a hint (or more) of the island’s aromatic wild vegetation, similar to what the French call garrigue. The wines often also have a salty character that brings to mind Sicily’s sea breezes.
My favorite white of the tasting, the 2025 Cassarà Grillo ($20), is very floral, with lime and white stone fruit flavors. An intriguing and stunning wine. Unfortunately, it is not widely available in the U.S. and will be hard to find.
More widely available and quite typical is the 2025 Donnafugata “SurSur” Grillo ($26), which displays zippy citrus and white fruit with a hint of wild herbs and some salinity on the finish.
The 2025 Tasca d’Almerita Regaleali “Cavallo delle Fatte” Grillo ($20) is very racy, with flavors of lime, lime pith, grapefruit, wet stone and a long finish. The 2025 Feudo Montoni Grillo ($24) is fleshier, with green apple and apple peel, an appealing herbal note and good length. Baglio di Pianetto also poured an excellent grillo, but it’s not currently available in the U.S.
Grillo is by no means the only white grape grown in Sicily. (There’s even chardonnay, but I mostly skipped those wines.) Here are a few other whites I recommend.
The wines of Mount Etna, both white and red, are having their moment; carricante is the volcanic area’s white. The 2023 Donnafugata “Sul Vulcano” Etna Bianco ($42) is a blend dominated by carricante, and it displays a lot of minerality, along with juicy white stone fruit.
The 2025 Planeta “La Segreta Bianco” ($20) is another blend, this one dominated by grecanico. It’s fresh and a little herbal, with lime, apple, lime pith and a salty note.
Finally, there’s the 2025 Tasca d’Almerita Regaleali Bianco ($16), which is mostly inzolia, grecanico and catarratto. It’s fleshy on the nose but leaner on the palate, with racy citrus, golden apple and stone fruit.