Sicily's flagship red takes its name from the town of Avola in the island's southeast, where the grape has long ripened black and sweet in the Mediterranean heat. For roughly a century its fate was anonymity: it left the island in bulk, shipped north to deepen and strengthen thinner wines across Europe, its name lost somewhere at the dock.
The estate-bottling turn of the 1990s gave the grape its name back. Sicilian houses began treating Nero d'Avola as a variety to sign rather than a commodity to pump, and its black plum, carob and sweet herbs found an international audience. In Cerasuolo di Vittoria — the island's only DOCG — it softens into fragrance alongside Frappato, proof that Sicily's workhorse had been a thoroughbred all along.