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Donnafugata
Sicily, Italy4 wines3.9 avg
22
The Rallo family's serious-Sicily project across Contessa Entellina, Pantelleria, Etna, and Vittoria - named after Lampedusa's Leopard, anchored by Ben Ryé.
Donnafugata was founded in 1983 by Giacomo Rallo, fourth-generation heir to a Marsala-producing family that had been making wine since 1851, together with his wife Gabriella, a pioneering voice in Sicilian female viticulture. Giacomo's ambition was to break the cliché of Southern Italian wine as heavy and alcoholic - to prove Sicily could produce fresh, aromatic, age-worthy wines at a time when most of the island's output was either industrial Marsala or bulk red. Today the estate is run by their children, siblings José (CEO) and Antonio Rallo (winemaker).
The name comes from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo - The Leopard - whose fictional "Donnafugata" estate was located in the hills around Contessa Entellina, where the Rallos planted their first vineyards. A woman in flight (the literal meaning of Donnafugata) features on every label.
The estate has grown into Sicily's most ambitious multi-zone project. The historic core is at Contessa Entellina in central-western Sicily. In the decades since, the Rallos added vineyards on Pantelleria (for Zibibbo), on Mount Etna (from 2016, for Nerello Mascalese), and in Vittoria (from 2013, for Frappato and Cerasuolo di Vittoria). Total holdings are around five hundred hectares. SOStain-certified sustainability, with progressive organic conversion in several zones. Native varieties dominate - Nero d'Avola, Nerello Mascalese, Perricone, Frappato, Grillo, Zibibbo, Ansonica - with international grapes like Chardonnay, Cabernet, Merlot, Syrah, and Petit Verdot rounding out the catalogue.
The iconic wines:
- Ben Ryé - "son of the wind" in Arabic. The benchmark Passito di Pantelleria from sun-dried Zibibbo, and one of the most celebrated sweet wines in Italy.
- Mille e Una Notte - "a thousand and one nights." Flagship red from Contessa Entellina, Nero d'Avola with Petit Verdot and Syrah.
- Tancredi - first made in 1990, an early pioneering blend of Nero d'Avola with Cabernet Sauvignon.
- Anthilia - entry-level Grillo-based white, the house's introduction card.
- Sedàra - approachable Nero d'Avola.
- Sur Sur - fresh varietal Grillo.
- Vigna di Gabri - single-vineyard Ansonica-led white, named for Gabriella.
- La Fuga (Chardonnay) and Angheli (Merlot-based red) round out the range.
Donnafugata is not in the natural-wine register, and is deliberately commercial in scale. But it is serious commercial - a benchmark for what ambitious, terroir-attentive Sicilian wine looks like when someone decides to run it properly.
