Mt Etna Tour - Wine Tasting with Lunch out of Taormina

Funny you should mention this. We are heading to Taormina this morning via train from Salerno. And through the tour guide Sicily Life, we have set up a gastronomic/winery tour on Tuesday. We worked with them 15 years ago, they are reliable, and are also handling picking us up at the Taormina/Giardini train station and driving us to the Catania airport at the end of our stay.

It is not cheap (540€ for 4) but they'll pick us up at our AirBnB and take us into the Alcantara Valley with stops along the way, for wine and a light lunch, which in Italy I'm finding out is NEVER light! Check out their website for details, but know that our tour is decidedly NOT aggressive. And...they are telling me that Mt. Etna erupting will NOT affect our tour!😎

I will report back on Wednesday...

Highly recommend Emilio Sciacca Etna Wine. It is a small winery with a small tasting building has been lovingly and beautifully restored. The view of Mt. Etna from the covered outside seating is worth the trip in and of itself. And Vincenzo, the kind and informative sommelier, is a pleasure. We thoroughly enjoyed this first stop on our self-drive tour from Taormina around Mt. Etna (based on a route in the RS Sicily guidebook). At the end of the day, on the recommendation of the hosts at our accommodation, we stopped for a tasting and meal at Gambino. Gambino was large, very crowded, loud, impersonal, and a disappointment. The highlight there was the lovely view toward Taormina.

I'm curious why you want to avoid Gambino's winery. It's probably the most impressive single winery I've ever visited, matched only by Marquis de Terme. They also served us a fabulous lunch.

We had the most amazing lunch/tasting/tour at Benanti Winery. We scheduled the premium tasting with lunch and it was 5-star! First, we had several courses of food prepared by a Michelin chef who was very accommodating of my food intolerances. The sommelier was outstanding in explaining the different regions of Mt Etna and providing in-depth analysis of the premium wines we tasted. The whole experience was well worth the €140 each. One of my friends and I ended up buying a case each of wine to be shipped home. I can’t recommend this experience enough.

OP--

This probably isn't the tour you want but we had an absolutely fabulous day with Fabbio of Sicily Life.

Picked us up at 1PM at our AirBnB in Taormina, in a spacious minivan for the four of us. Drove us up and up the winding slopes of Etna, after about an hour stopping at 6000 feet at the foot of the 2002 lava flow, in an Alpine setting, very cool. Fabbio said that was as far as his vehicle could take us, that to proceed further would require the presence of a registered volcanologist, and would be hiking on foot or on off-road vehicle.

Frankly, I didn't care to go any further as the hiking looked pretty serious, and besides we were hearing constant thunder-like rumblings from the opposite southeast crater of Etna, could see some plumes and even had some ash rain fall on us with the occasional wind. There were a couple good curio shops as well and the ability to walk into the lava and grab a rock or two for home.

Then we were driven in a heavy fog to the Gambino Winery about 30 minutes away, for a delightful light dinner of charcuterie, cheeses, sausage/potatoes, paired with 5 of their wines, of which their silky Nero D' Avola was my favorite. It was not busy at all and we were treated excellently there.

Fabbio--who was very knowledgeable and spoke flawless English--then drove us down to the ancient village of Castiglione, where we saw the Byzantine 6th century Castello di Lauria, and the lookout to the gorgeous Alcantara Valley and Gorge. He finally dropped us off by Taormina's Porta Catania at 7PM and we thanked him for a wonderful tour.