What is Tasca d'Almerita best known for?

One bottle above all: Rosso del Conte, first made in 1970 and generally counted as the wine that proved Sicily could make a serious, age-worthy red long before the island was fashionable. It's built around Nero d'Avola from old vines on the Regaleali estate. The house is also a benchmark for everyday Sicilian wine done properly — clean, honest Nero d'Avola and whites — and, more recently, for its move onto Mount Etna.

Where is the Regaleali estate?

Deep in the Sicilian interior, up in the cool, wind-scoured highlands between Palermo and Caltanissetta, straddling the Contea di Sclafani DOC. This is not the coast — it's a big, self-contained upland estate of vineyards, wheat and hills, one of the largest single wine properties in Italy, and the altitude is the point: warm days, cold nights, wines that keep their freshness in a hot climate.

What's the difference between Tasca d'Almerita and Tascante?

Same family, different mountain. Tasca d'Almerita is the historic house, centred on Regaleali. Tascante is its estate on the north slope of Mount Etna, where the grape is Nerello Mascalese and the wines are lithe, high, mineral volcanic reds — a completely different Sicily from Regaleali's sun-warmed interior. The family runs a small archipelago of estates around the island; Etna is the one that changed how people think about the name.

Can you visit Tasca d'Almerita at Regaleali?

Yes — the estate has long welcomed visitors for tastings and hospitality, but arrange it ahead rather than turning up. Regaleali is remote by design, an hour and more into the hills from the coast, so it rewards planning: book the visit, then build the day around it. Confirm the current format on the estate's own site before you travel.

Tasca d'Almerita

Long before Sicily was cool, this family was making wine here as if it already were.

Tasca d'Almerita is the aristocrat of Sicilian wine — a titled family that has farmed the same high interior estate for the better part of two centuries and, at a moment when the island meant cheap bulk wine to most of the world, quietly made bottles built to sit in a cellar. The home estate is Regaleali, up in the wind-blown highlands of central Sicily, and the wine that made the argument is Rosso del Conte, first pressed in 1970. Everything the island now sells the world about elegance, altitude and age-worthiness, this house was doing while nobody was looking.

The estate in the hills

Forget the coast. Regaleali sits far inland, in the cool upland country between Palermo and Caltanissetta, straddling two provinces and the Contea di Sclafani DOC. It's enormous — a whole self-sufficient world of vineyards, wheat fields and rolling hills, and one of the great single estates of Italy. The size is famous, but the altitude is what matters in the glass.

Up here the days are hot and the nights turn genuinely cold, and that swing is the estate's secret weapon in a warm climate: it lets the grapes ripen fully while holding on to acidity and perfume. Sicilian wine is too often heavy and baked. Regaleali's are lifted and fresh, and the reason is simply where the family chose to plant, generations before anyone was talking about cool-climate Sicily.

The rest of the island discovered altitude in the last twenty years. This family has been farming it since the 1800s.

The wines that made the name

Start with Rosso del Conte, because it's the wine that changed the conversation. First made in 1970, built around old-vine Nero d'Avola from a prized parcel on the estate, it was one of the very first Sicilian reds conceived as a serious keeping wine rather than something to drink young and cheap. Dark, savoury, structured, capable of decades — it proved a point the whole island now trades on. This is the bottle to chase.

But don't let the flagship fool you into thinking this is a one-wine house. The everyday Regaleali Nero d'Avola is the one to actually open tonight: unfussy, bright, properly made, the sunny black-cherry heart of Sicilian red without the weight — the clearest cheap lesson in what this grape does when someone bothers to farm it well. There's a whole range of whites and reds off the estate besides, but those two are the poles: the icon and the honest everyday.

And then there's the newer act, which is where things get interesting.

Then they went to the volcano

The most compelling recent chapter isn't at Regaleali at all — it's on Mount Etna, under the name Tascante. On the volcano's north slope the family farms Nerello Mascalese, Etna's noble red grape, and makes wines that could not be more different from the sun-warmed interior: pale, high-toned, mineral, tense, closer in spirit to Nebbiolo or fine Burgundy than to anything you'd picture from Sicily. Single-contrada bottlings pick out individual volcanic sites the way the Langhe carves up its crus.

It's the same family, a completely different Sicily — and it's the project that reintroduced the house to a new generation of drinkers who arrived through Etna's boom. Regaleali is the aristocratic classic. Tascante is the estate proving it can still read where the island is going.

The family's reach doesn't stop there. There are further estates dotted around the island — on the Aeolian island of Salina, over on the west coast, in the hills above Palermo — each chasing a different grape and site. But the two poles to understand are Regaleali and Etna: the interior and the volcano.

Visiting

Regaleali welcomes visitors, but it is not a roadside cellar door — it's a working estate deep in the hills, an hour and more from the coast, and that remoteness is exactly the appeal. Treat the booking as step one and build the day around it. Guided tastings walk you through the range in the setting that produced it, and the drive up into the highlands is half the experience. Arrange it through the estate's own site, and confirm the current hospitality format before you set out.

If Regaleali is too far for your trip, the wines are the easier meeting point — and if it's Etna pulling at you, the volcano estate is its own reason to go. Either way, book ahead. This is not walk-in country.

What to buy

Match the bottle to the occasion. For most tables, the Regaleali Nero d'Avola is the easy, generous everyday yes — the house style at its most useful with dinner. If you want to understand why this family matters, reach for Rosso del Conte from a good vintage and give it time; it's the wine that made Sicily serious, and it's built to reward the wait. And if you're chasing the island's future rather than its past, the Tascante Etna Rosso is the pale, mineral, volcanic counter-argument — the same great name, an entirely different mountain.