Cantoneri, Tenuta della Dainara, Etna Rosso

Every once in a while, a wine comes along whose price simply makes no sense. Cantoneri’s 2022 Tenuta della Dainara is a beautifully mature, properly aged Etna Rosso from genuinely top-tier north-slope terroir, yet it is priced more like anonymous négociant wine. This is exactly the opposite of what we have come to expect from Etna, a region whose most sought after red increasingly commands punishing, Burgundy-like prices. At the other end of the price scale, “weeknight” Etna reds are often generic blends assembled for the international market and released too young. But with today’s beauty, you get the real thing: old-vine Nerello Mascalese grown high above Solicchiata in one of Etna’s most exciting neighborhoods, given serious élevage and then enough time in bottle for the tannins to soften, the fruit to settle and the volcanic character to come completely into focus. It is the increasingly rare experience of drinking a fully realized, top-terroir Etna Rosso for the price of an entry-level wine.

The backstory is even better. Cantoneri began in 1997, when Rosa and Carmelo Assennato purchased an old rural property at Solicchiata, high on Etna's northern slope, surrounded by an existing vineyard known as Tenuta della Dainara. This was extraordinarily early in the modern Etna story. The international rush to Etna had barely begun, and many of the estates that would eventually make this stretch of the volcano famous had not yet released a bottle. The family initially approached the property as a farm rather than as a vehicle for building a fashionable winery. Beginning in 2011, they undertook a much more ambitious restoration and expansion of the vineyards, preserving old alberello-trained vines while adding new plantings. Remarkably, Cantoneri's first estate bottling did not arrive until the 2020 vintage. In other words, this is a family that spent decades living with and farming this land before most wine drinkers had ever heard its name.

And the land is exceptional. Solicchiata sits in the heart of the great north-slope corridor between Linguaglossa and Randazzo, where altitude, exposure and successive lava flows create an intricate patchwork of micro-terroirs. Cantoneri's vineyards sit around 650–700 meters above sea level in sandy, loamy volcanic soils littered with lava stone. This is the same immediate neighborhood where individual contrade and vineyards now produce some of the most coveted Nerello Mascalese in Sicily. The combination of elevation, porous volcanic earth, dramatic day-night temperature swings and Etna's long autumn growing season is particularly suited to Nerello Mascalese, a grape capable of transmitting remarkably small differences in site. Here it gives wines with the perfume and transparency that make comparisons to Pinot Noir tempting, but with a darker Mediterranean register of smoke, iron, dried herbs and volcanic earth that belongs unmistakably to Etna.

Tenuta della Dainara is Cantoneri's flagship interpretation of that landscape: 95% Nerello Mascalese with 5% Nerello Cappuccio, matured in French tonneaux. What I love is that Cantoneri doesn't force the wine into either of the stylistic camps that increasingly define modern Etna. This isn't a squeaky-clean, polished international red stripped of its volcanic rough edges, nor is it deliberately funky, volatile or "natural" for the sake of making a point. There is fruit, flesh and a subtle imprint of barrel, but underneath it remains unmistakably Nerello: savory, mineral, tannic, aromatic and wonderfully transparent. At this price, that distinction matters. This tastes less like an inexpensive introduction to Etna and much more like a serious north-slope wine that happens to be inexpensive.

Serve the 2022 Tenuta della Dainara at roughly 60°F in a Burgundy glass, and give it 20–30 minutes of air. The color is translucent ruby moving toward garnet at the rim, immediately signaling Nerello rather than conventional southern Italian richness. Aromatically, it opens with sour cherry, wild strawberry and red plum, followed by violet, dried Mediterranean herbs, orange peel, black pepper, warm stone, smoke and a distinctly ferrous, almost bloody mineral note. The palate has more flesh than the color suggests, with ripe red and dark cherry wrapped around bright acidity and fine but persistent volcanic tannins. The tonneaux contribute a faint layer of sweet spice without obscuring the wine's earthy, stony core. The finish is long, dry and savory, with cherry skin, iron, ash and herbs lingering after the fruit recedes. Pair it with Pasta alla Norma, the iconic dish of nearby Catania: fried eggplant and tomato echo the wine's combination of sweetness and savory earth, ricotta salata softens Nerello's tannin, and basil draws out its wild herbal perfume. Few pairings could place the wine more convincingly back on the slopes of the mountain where it was grown.