Thirty years in, modern Sicily’s most emblematic family winery, Planeta, is still pushing boundaries.
In the 1990s, when Sicilian grape varieties were unknown and quality wines from the island were scarce, Planeta made waves with its Chardonnay from the hills of western Sicily. The Planetas then moved steadily across the island, buying land and planting vineyards in southeastern Sicily’s Vittoria and Noto DOCs, followed by the northeastern corner of the island, with Mount Etna and the obscure Capo Milazzo.
Today, Planeta makes more than 20 estate wines for a total annual production of more than 16,000 cases. The family company is a rare bird in the wine business: traditional and experimental, local and international, often in a class of its own and always Sicilian.
Consider Planeta’s Etna estate. It makes Etna rosso (from Nerello Mascalese and Etna bianco (from Carricante), along with a red and white from the same varieties but outside the Etna appellation’s limits, at an elevation of more than 3,280 feet above sea level. Here, at that altitude, it also makes Pinot Nero, the area’s only Riesling and a sparkling Carricante.
“We’ve always avoided our comfort zone,” says Planeta CEO and winemaker Alessio Planeta, 58. As a young man, he learned under the wings of his legendary uncle, the viticulturist Diego Planeta, and family friend Giacomo Tachis.
The Planetas, a noble Sicilian family whose ancestors arrived from Spain about 500 years ago during Aragonese rule, have gone beyond wine, investing in art awards and expanding into small hotels and hospitality—all on Sicily and without foreign partners.
About six years ago, Planeta did something entirely different, teaming up with France’s Oddo family—investors in forests, renewable energy, real estate and wineries from Provence and Sancerre to South Africa—for a new project near Planeta’s centuries-old farming base in Menfi.
“I had this dream to bring investors to Sicily, to construct a project together and to share experiences,” says Planeta, who was introduced to the French family by Planeta’s French wine consultant, Florent Dumeau.
The project was set up to run independently, with its own vineyards, staff, a refurbished winery in Menfi and, says Alessio, “its own culture.”
In 2019, the families bought about 270 acres in nearby Sambuca di Sicilia, inland from the Mediterranean coast, about 12 miles from Menfi. The land was wild and hilly, with slopes and forests climbing from 1,300 feet to 2,000 feet above sea level.
“It was a place never touched by the hands of man,” says Planeta.
Planeta, whose responsibility was cultivating vineyards and making the wine, created another challenge: dry farming with biodynamic methods. His idea was to farm for low yields, harvest “perfect grapes” and then, relying on indigenous yeasts for fermentation, transform them into wine with “maniacal care.”
Planeta reasoned that the project, called Serra Ferdinandea, also needed to blend French and Sicilian varieties in the wines. (The name fittingly comes from the volcanic Ferdinandea Island, which emerged out of the sea off Sicily’s southwestern coast in the summer of 1831—only to disappear below the surface four months later. In those months, the island was claimed by the newly restored French monarchy and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, as well as the British.)
Planeta planted about 45 acres of vineyards in marine calcareous soils (meaning the land has good water drainage and is rich in calcium carbonate from the crushed, decayed bones and shells of sea creatures), with a variety of sun exposures. For Serra Ferdinandea’s white, Planeta chose equal parts of the variety Grillo and the French variety Sauvignon Blanc, which are often compared with each other for their citrus and herbal aromas.
For the red and rosé wines, Planeta turned to a fairly common western Sicilian blend of the French Rhône native Syrah and local Nero d’Avola. “The varieties are instruments to express the terroir,” says Planeta.
Planeta’s estates are all certified organic, but biodynamic farming was new to them. (Serra Ferdinandea is expected to earn that certification this spring.) Now Planeta plans to spread the method to other estates, starting with Etna.
“Biodynamics has taught me that you don’t need to force a vineyard—or to push vines to produce,” Planeta says. “In one sense, it’s a return to the past.”
In Sicily, like much of Italy, the last two vintages were generally devastating; a downy mildew blight in 2023 was followed by severe drought in 2024. But Serra Ferdinandea’s vineyards—fanned by a succession of humid winds from the sea and cold, drying winds from the north—fared well, especially the Nero d’Avola plantings.
At the winery, Serra Ferdinandea’s 30-year-old project manager, Cecilia Carbone, opened a range of bottles, starting with the 2023 white. Sleek and vibrant, the wine is made from free-run juice, undergoes a light, partial skin contact and is fermented mostly in oak barrels.
“I am not much of a Sauvignon Blanc fan,” admits Carbone, “but the Sauvignon and the Grillo help each other. The Sauvignon from here tends to be alive—it doesn’t sit down.”
The 2021 red Syrah-Nero d’Avola I tasted was lithe and spicey. It was a red wine (not a dark, inky version of these two grapes) dominated by fruit flavors that matched its color—a reflection, I assumed, of its cool, high-altitude, calcareous vineyards.
The Serra Ferdinandea wines are a response, Planeta says, to the modern boom of “natural wines,” which he describes as a “cry from the consumer.”
“The wines are made in a natural way, but they are clean. Some people have complained that the wines are too clean. What does that mean?” says Planeta with a laugh. “The same harmony you have in nature, we want to be in the glass. We wanted to add nothing between the terroir and the glass.”
That afternoon, I walked the hills of Serra Ferdinandea with Carbone, right up until the sunset. The forested areas were a jumble of pines, cypresses, wild olives, wild pear and madrone. On other parts of the property were a small herd of grazing cattle used for compost and meat, hives of Sicilian black bees, and fields on which grains and other crops are rotated. The vineyards were, at least for this moment in late winter, covered in waist-high grasses.
More than anything, the project shows Planeta’s unwillingness to rest on its substantial laurels (which include nearly 120 wines scoring 90 points or higher in Wine Spectator blind tastings).
I’ve come to know Alessio Planeta over the years as naturally curious and reflective. And this partnership has taught him something about the wider world of wine.
While Planeta has been overseeing the viticulture and winemaking, the Oddos handle the international sales, bringing the Serra Ferdinandea wines to markets throughout Europe, as well as to the Caribbean on the chic French island of St. Barts.
The marketing is where Planeta has seen the principal differences between the two cultures. “In France, there is a whole system of wine merchants and négociants. The French are more dealers—spot sellers,” he explains. “We Sicilians have commercial relations that are very long and personal.”
“Sicilians are the worst merchants in the world. We are producers—not sellers,” he adds, echoing a sentiment that has been expressed by generations of Sicilian writers. “It is interesting to see how the French work. They have a self-confidence; they are much more confident than we are.”
