Region: Terre Siciliane-IGT, Italy
Varietal: 100% Moscatella di Noto
Tasting Notes: Svelte bodied wine, with beautiful bright acidity balanced against soft tropical fruit. A whiff of salty sea air lends a slight saline finish. Summer in a glass!
Pairing: Moscato is sweet, so ideally you should pair it with foods possessing opposite flavor profiles — spicy, sour, salty, bitter. While its sweet fruity essence can make it difficult to pair with a main course, Moscato is perfect with appetizers, sweet brunch dishes, dessert, and alone as an aperitif. Soft, creamy Brie and Camembert stand up to Moscato's bright fruit profile without overpowering it. Salty roasted peanuts or almonds compliment the wines flavors. If you want to serve this with a main course I suggest Thai larb, Indian vindaloo curries, habanero-spiked chicken wings, or anything with mouth-tingling Sichuan peppercorns. Make these Tamarind Spiced Nuts With Mint by Melissa Clark, invite a couple friends to join on a sunny afternoon, voila!
“Mortellito is in Val di Noto, in a corner of Sicily that lies at the same latitudes as North Africa’s arid desert climate. Its vineyards are a few kilometers from the coast, with grooves of ancient olive and almonds trees breaking the wind off the sea; abandoned and still working fishing ports dot the landscape. Owner Dario Serrentino has always enjoyed the contrasts of this
coastal growing area, which he calls ‘a desert next to the beach.’ Over the years, lucky for us, he’s learned to coax extremely elegant wines from this receding coast of limestone, which, he says, is ‘the magic to produce wines with tension, freshness, and complex salinity.’ In Dario’s best vintages, his rosso and bianco wines have a tapering svelte finish, cool and salt-dusted. Drinking them is akin to a dive into the nearby Ionian sea on a hot summer day.” -Wine Importer PortoVino
"Mortellito came to be in 2014. After years of selling off his grapes to the likes of natural Sicilian wine legends such as Frank Cornelissen and Lamoresca, Dario Serrentino decided to start bottling his own wine. His goal from the start was to produce natural wines that are as clean and transparent as possible. The Mortellito wines capture freshness, and are deeply terroir transparent. They capture the magic of great Sicilian wines: hedonistic fruit tempered by assertive minerality and fresh acidity.
They use no sulfur in the winemaking except a small amount at bottling. The wines of Mortellito are full of vibrancy and life; prime examples of how natural winemaking and viticulture can adapt to our changing world to produce wines that are balanced, pretty and down right delicious. 100% Moscato di Noto, made with just a touch of skin contact (two days). Fresh and floral, this is a lovely and versatile Sicilian white."-Wine Chateau