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From War Rooms to Olive Groves: How a U.S. Intelligence Veteran Found Peace as a ‘Poor Farmer’ in Sicily

Anthony Campanella spent four decades serving in some of America's most vital and sensitive roles, with tenures in the Marine Corps, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security. His work spanned intelligence analysis, crisis management, and international security cooperation, including deployments to active war zones. Yet no matter how far he traveled, he remained deeply rooted in his Sicilian heritage—something he says shaped his identity and perspective throughout his career. That connection has guided him to a quieter, more grounded chapter: an off-the-grid retirement as a self-described povero contadino (poor farmer) in rural Sicily.

He recently shared more about his professional and ancestral background, what inspired his move, his challenges, his favorite places in Sicily, and advice for those wishing to settle down on Italy's largest island.



Tell us more about your professional background.

It goes back 40 years after high school. I joined the Marine Corps and was an intelligence specialist, which is a precursor to coming here, because my last two years in the Marine Corps, I spent on a Navy ship in the middle of the Mediterranean. It was summertime—no wars, no conflicts. It was basically a Liberty Cruise, where we just visited 11 countries in the Mediterranean and enjoyed the heck out of it—great weather, great people, beaches, and food. The cost of living was cheap.

 

After the Marine Corps, I went back to college, finished my degree, and was hired by the Defense Intelligence Agency in their crisis management shop. We dealt with all current operations around the world, whether it was Haiti, Somalia, Iraq, or wherever there was a hotspot. We were the ones who provided national-level intelligence support to the warfighters.

 

I have deployed three times to "active" war zones. The first was for six months in support of Bosnia at the NATO Combined Air Operations Center in Vicenza, Italy. While my colleagues were being sent to places like Tuzla and Sarajevo, I was out of danger and safe and sound in the land of pizza and vino.  


After that, I was given a Cuba assignment, which didn't amount to anything, so we never even made it to Cuba. We made it as far as Norfolk, Virginia.


The third one was in Brazzaville, Congo, because of a coup in Zaire. They thought we might need to evacuate the embassy staff and American citizens. But again, that fizzled out.


While I was in Brazzaville, I was selected to be the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) representative to the White House. So, I spent two years as a staff member of President Clinton's National Security Council in the White House Situation Room.


It was a 24-hour operation center monitoring worldwide events. You think you'll live the glory when you brief the president on a major event, but when something does happen, obviously, it's in the moment, and you don't have any answers and get yelled at.


Really, a great job. It was very exciting. The best two years of my life, I think, professionally.

 

After that, I left government service and went into consulting, working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 11 in the Pentagon. When the plane came in, I was the luckiest man in America. I was on the opposite side of the building and didn't see, hear, feel, smell anything. So I was never, ever in danger. Just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or the right place at the wrong time because I was on the opposite side of the building and had nothing there.

 

After that, the Department of Homeland Security was formed in response to the terrorist attacks. I went to work in the intelligence section for General Hughes, who used to be the director of DIA. He became the first assistant secretary for intelligence at DHS.

 

I helped them form what became the DHS intelligence apparatus. I did that for a few years, and then I left and went to do foreign military sales and security cooperation with foreign governments on behalf of the U.S. government. I traveled extensively in Europe and Asia to support the U.S. government in providing material solutions to foreign governments.

 

It was interesting for a kid from Everett, Massachusetts. I always have to reiterate: Never, at one point in my life, have I ever seen a shot fired in anger. Nor have I ever been in any kind of danger zone. I've been extremely lucky to have spent that long of a career in and around international crises, but never once has it touched me.

 

 Anthony took his mother and aunt to Pietraperzia for the first time in 1997.

What is your connection to Sicily?

All four of my grandparents were born and raised in Sicily. My father's parents were from Messina, and they immigrated in 1906. My mother's parents are from Pietraperzia, which is in the dead geographic center of the island. I always say it has more sheep than people. My maternal grandfather came over in 1911, and my grandmother came over in 1913.

 

What inspired you to move to Sicily?

My grandparents romanticized the island: fig trees on every corner, apricots whenever you want them, and prickly pears by the dozens. This is true, but I also knew there was a reason they left, so I took it with a grain of salt.


I had never come as a kid or as a young adult. My first time here was in 1988, but it was only a short visit while I was in the Marine Corps. But I had spent a lot of time in the Mediterranean during the summer, so that was when I first started saying, "This is going to be a great place to retire."


It's a great launch point for any other place in Europe or Northern Africa if you want to travel and explore. But it was always kind of a pipe dream. Alfred Zappala of You, Me, and Sicily! used to own a little food store in Lawrence, Massachusetts, called All Things Sicilian. So, after I had gone home for some vacation, my mother and I took a ride up there to check out the shop.


There was a book, Many Beautiful Things,  written by Vincent Schiavelli, an actor in Ghost, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Night Shift. He had made the transition from the States to retiring in Polizzi Generosa. The book was just so captivating, and he made it sound so seamless.


In hindsight, I probably should have said, "Of course, they all welcomed you, Vincent Schiavelli; you're a multimillionaire actor." But that was when I started to put it into motion.

 

Why not? I mean, I had basically lived away from my family since 1984. So it wasn't like I was living with my family on the street and then taking off and replanting myself. I was used to communicating via texts, phone calls, emails, and whatever it was, and seeing them once or twice a year for holidays and summer vacation. So it wasn't a major transition for me.

 

I said, "Now's the time. You're not getting any younger; enjoy your life—what's left of it."

 

Anthony moved to Sicily with just three bags.

 

What challenges did you face settling in Sicily?

First, I wanted to exercise my right to Italian citizenship, and that's a nightmare. Even when you follow the rules, it's a nightmare. Well, I didn't follow the rules because I had a top-secret security clearance with the government, and I couldn't apply for a foreign citizenship while the government was entrusting me with their precious secrets. They don't take it kindly if you're pledging allegiance to a foreign government when they provide you with this. So I had to wait until I retired.

 

I had two options. I could stay in the States for two years and go through the long process of getting my citizenship, but then I would be living in the U.S. with the U.S. cost of living, which would drain resources. Or I could come here and wing it, which is what I did.

 

It got done. And I'm legal. Everything's legal now. I pay my taxes, I do everything. The Carabinieri are not coming to the door.

 

The strange thing is that when you apply for citizenship, you do so at the city hall here at the Comune, which is unheard of in the States. You wouldn't just go to your city hall to apply for citizenship.

 

When I applied for citizenship, I went to the Stato Civile and they told me, "We can't accept your application because you don't have residency here. You need to go to the Anagrafe and get residency."

 

So I ran over to the Anagrafe and said, "Hey, I bought a house. I live here. I need to get my residency." They said, "OK, well, where's your long-term visa?" I was like, "Oh, I don't have one. I'm here on my tourist passport."

 

They said, "We can't give you residency. If you only have a tourist passport, you need to go to the Questura in Syracuse and apply for a long-term, elective residency visa. They'll give you your one-year elective residency visa, Signora Izzo will accept your application, and everybody goes home happy."

 

So I went up to the Questura and told them the story, and they said, "No, no, no, no, you don't need to do that at all. You go back and tell Signora Izzo to accept your paperwork because she will fill out a form as soon as she accepts it. It comes to us, and we give you your long-term visa because now you're awaiting adjudication."

 

So, basically, A told me to go to B, B told me to go to C, and C told me to go to A, and nobody was budging. We finally broke the logjam because the guys in the Anagrafe Office did me a solid favor, and I was able to obtain residency without the long-term visa.

 

It ended up working out. Two weeks later, I got my citizenship, and everybody went home happy, especially me, and probably Signora Izzo in the Comune, because I think she was sick of seeing my face.

 

I moved to Avola, Provincia di Siracusa. I had visited here three times before, in the 1990s, in 2011, and then again in 2015. My requirements were that I wanted to be 10 minutes from the beach and an hour from the airport.

 

This zone is beautiful. It's close enough to Syracuse, close enough to the airport, and right on the beach. So it met, checked off all the checkpoints, and I'm glad to be here.

 

Good Friday in Pietraperzia

 

Describe your lifestyle.

I call myself a povero contadino, a poor farmer in terms of both money and the quality of my stuff.

 

A British friend of mine here was renting from this woman who owned this farm up in the mountains. She said, "Hey, you know everybody. Can you come look at this place? She's trying to sell it. It's been in her family her whole life. She's 81 years old, and she can't care for it anymore. She has three kids and 10 grandkids, and they don't want it."

 

So I said, "Sure, I'll come up and look at it."

 

I went up to the mountains and saw the place. There is a house there, but the house is not supposed to be there. So they've kind of let it go astray. But it has a beautiful brick oven barbecue area, 120 trees, and about two acres of land where I can plant my fruits and vegetables in the ground.

 

I asked my friend, "Well, what is she asking for?" She said, "10,000." And I bought it right away.

 

The owner is now 86 years old, and whenever I collect anything from the trees —whether it's apricots, pears, peaches, figs, quince, or cherries —I always bring a big cestino, a large basket, to the woman. After all, I figured she's had this her whole life. She didn't want to sell it; she was forced because she couldn't keep up with it.

 

So I give her all that stuff, and she's very, very thankful all the time. But if I plant something in the ground—lettuce, zucchini, eggplant, or tomatoes—and I bring it down to her, she says, "Non voglio," I don't want it. And I'm like, "Why don't you want it?" She says, "Not mine."

 

The trees used to be hers, so she has an affinity for the trees, but if I put something in the ground, she doesn't want it. She'll accept the tree stuff because she knows that she's responsible for those trees being as productive as they are.

 

I was not looking for a farm. I was not looking for some land. I had no real desire, certainly no skill.

 

I keep learning every day, but I don't sell anything. I give everything away. I get about 135 liters of olive oil a year and just hand it out. I use that as tips to my barber, butcher, and folks who won't accept tips. And then I give the rest away to family, friends, and visitors.

 

I do the same with all the fruits and vegetables. I just give what I can't eat to my neighbors here. It's definitely not a money-making scheme!

 

Anthony practices a new farming technique. 

How did you prepare yourself for this lifestyle?

I winged it. For somebody who, at work, is very fastidious in planning everything, I figured it out when I got here, and that's literally what I did.

 

I have one cousin who lives in Pietraperzia and speaks English and Sicilian fluently. He's been a godsend whenever I've needed assistance trying to meander through some kind of bureaucracy or vehicle issue or something like that. So he's been very, very helpful. So I did have a support system here—a support system of one, but that's really all I needed. And I had traveled to probably 60 or so countries before I moved here, so I think I'm very good at assimilating.

 

I wasn't worried about coming in and not having my Starbucks or my McDonald's. So that stuff was never a problem. The bureaucracy is the bureaucracy.

 

Citizenship was really the hardest thing. I had told people that I think the motto for Italian bureaucrats is, "As long as I've done nothing, I've done nothing wrong. So you can't tell me I messed up. I didn't do anything, so I didn't do anything wrong."

 

That was my biggest headache, because I'm a get-stuff-done kind of guy. But I just kept telling myself, "Hey, you're paying a euro a kilo for fruit. Settle down, suck it up, and go with the flow." Other than that, there were no transition problems whatsoever.

 

When I bought this house here, I technically didn't even know I had bought it. I had come here on a Friday night, and we looked at it with a realtor, and I made my offer. They said, "We have to talk to the owners." I said, "Sure, no problem."

 

We were leaving town 15 minutes later, and he called and said, "They accepted the offer. Can you come back on Monday to do the paperwork?" I said, "Sure."

 

I thought the paperwork was writing out the formal offer, but they tossed me the keys after I signed. I didn't even give anybody a penny.

 

So, even buying the house was simple. Obviously, no homeowner's inspection, no insurance. Because two days later, I called my cousin. I was like, "Filippo, we forgot to get insurance." He said, "What do you need insurance for?" I said, "I bought a house. What if it catches on fire?" He goes, "What's going to catch on fire?" I said, "Well, if somebody breaks in and steals something?" He goes, "You buy a new TV; what do you care?" I was like, "Well, what if somebody falls down my stairs?" He goes, "They fall down your stairs. Who cares?"

 

I've lived in this house for more than seven years and have never paid a penny in insurance, which is crazy to me, but that's the way it is.

 

 

What are your favorite places in Sicily and why?

I absolutely love Agrigento's Valley of the Temples. That's my favorite tourist spot. Other than that, I just love to go into the center of the country, go to Valguarnera Caropepe, or one of these small towns that have been abandoned by those who have had a mass exodus to the States, because it still has that look, that feel, that flavor of 1947.


Pietraperzia is a grand example. You go into the piazza in the daytime, and there are 200 men out there playing cards, drinking beers, and yelling at each other. They're there every single day.

 

There are no women; I'm not saying that's a good thing, but just that mentality that they're still in 1947. And I'll often ask my cousin's wife, "Why are there no women in town?" She goes, "Why would we want to go down there? That's where all the guys are." That's kind of their mentality.


There's a peace in that where there's no hustle and bustle. Being in D.C. for 30 years, that's a major transition. Obviously, I like Ortygia or Ragusa. I'm not a big fan of Taormina because I always tell people that it's not really Sicily. I'm not much of a fan of the big, big cities on the island. I just prefer a laid-back vibe.

 

A scene from the Pietraperzia Piazza

 

What advice do you have for those considering a move to Sicily?

First and foremost, be patient. Understand that you're a guest in this country. Even once you get your citizenship, you're still a guest here. Understand that, and then just understand the processes and work within those processes.

 

I try never to give advice. I tell people what happened to me. I won't give you advice because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That's the definition of normalcy here. You and I could do the exact same thing and have different results because you got a different clerk on a different day who is in a different mood. And so you can't say, "This is what I did, because you said you need these four documents," because they'll take those four documents and say, "Nope, you need two other documents." Or they'll say, "Why are you bringing me this stuff? I don't need it. I just need this one piece of paper."

 

For me personally, that's it. I would just ride the wave. It sounds weird, but what's going to happen is going to happen to you, and there's nothing that will prepare you for it. So, just have your Aperol spritz in the afternoon. Have a granita in the morning. If you're going to sit at the Questura for six hours, sit at the Questura for six hours.


Other than that, you just have to have the right mindset. You've got to be accepting of people and how they operate and work here. You have to have patience.

 

Just remember how lucky you are to be here. This is a beautiful, beautiful place.  

 

 

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From Dream Board to Vineyard: Rachel Villa’s Sicilian Love Story

Rachel Villa was living in Oxnard, California, working for a military child care program, and going through a divorce when a counselor asked her how she was feeling.

 
"Well, I'm feeling pretty crappy," she remembers saying.

 

At that moment, she was facing an existential crisis. She'd been a military wife and put her career on hold, and now she faced living on her own. She didn't know what she wanted to do with her life.


The counselor asked Rachel where she might want to take a vacation, to which Rachel responded, "You know what? I've never been to Europe, so I'm going to Italy."


The counselor told her to put it on her dream board, something Rachel had never heard of. Soon, she was clipping a cartoon picture of Italy from a magazine and tacking it on a board. That push-pin dream board evolved into a Pinterest page. Eventually, thanks to a chance encounter with a friend of a friend, she found herself facing a whole new world of possibilities in Sicily: a husband, a vineyard, and a family.


I recently had the opportunity to chat with Rachel about how her dream board became a reality and how she helped launch Catania-based Gimmillaro Family Vineyards.

 

 

What brought you to Sicily?

In another life before my ex-husband, I was in Pensacola, Florida, where my dad was stationed. Pensacola is the cradle of naval aviation and where the military trains all the pilots that we have agreements with.

 

During my college internship, I got a job on base that provided housing. I was there with all these other girls; we were with the officers and all these Italian Navy pilots. And man, that was fun. Every weekend, we would pile up in my Jeep and go to Pensacola Beach.

 
I stayed in touch with one guy (Ruggiero)—totally platonic—over email for 20 years. While dealing with this dream board, I decided to message him and tell him I was looking to come to Italy.


He said, "Where are you going to go?" And I said, "I don't know. There are a couple of jobs available. One of them is in Naples." He said, "You do not want to go there." And I was like, "Well, if it gets me to Italy, that's better than nothing!"


I applied for the job, and I got it. There were over a thousand applicants, and out of seven people, I was one who got this training position to be a manager with a child youth program.


Before I went to Naples, they wanted people to do some temporary assignments. So they sent me to Sicily at Sigonella Naval Air Station, where my friend was stationed in the Italian Navy. So I messaged him and told him when I was coming. And he said, "Actually, I'm on an assignment with the Italian Navy for the beginning of that time, but I have a friend who I can hook you up with to show you around."


I got a message from this guy named Marco, and I could hear his accent through the way he wrote, "I hope I do not disturb you."


I was like, "Who is this?" I started looking at his pictures, and he seemed to be in the military. And I was like, okay, so this is probably Ruggiero's friend. So I told him when I was arriving, and he offered to pick me up. And I was like, "No. My boss is picking me up, but just meet me at the residence." And he was waiting for me there. He was there every single night for the next 90 days.


Apparently, I had a boyfriend. Within 10 days of meeting this guy, he took me to meet his mom. And after 90 days, I had to go back to the States, and I was like, "I have a boyfriend in Italy. What am I going to do?"


I was not looking for it at all. I just was looking for an adventure. But gosh, I found a man.


He kept saying that he was a farmer and worked as an agricultural scientist, which was his degree. He was telling me some things about that, but I didn't ask many questions. I was not taking him seriously. I wouldn't say I didn't care. It was about me. It was me-time.


So, I came back to Oxnard and realized, "Wow, if I don't go back to Sicily, I don't know what we're going to do. This is going to be a crazy long-distance relationship. I'm going to have to go back and forth from Naples to Sicily every so often to see this guy. Is that even a relationship? Do I want to do that?"


During this training period, which took about a year, I ended up going to Key West, Florida, and everywhere else except Sicily. I finally decided to take him seriously as this relationship was progressing.

 

I had no idea that every time he went to a vineyard, it was his. I came to visit, and it was in October of 2017, and he took me to one of his locations where he was going to be doing a vendemmia, which is a grape harvest; our mutual friend came down, and his sister was there, and all these people he knew came. And I was like, "So whose farm is this?" And Marco was like, "It's mine." And I was like, "We have been together for a year. How did I not know that you had a vineyard?"


He said, "I don't come here very often. We just came for the vendemmia, and I trim the branches throughout the year and tend to the soil, but this is my vineyard."

 

I suddenly felt really out of my league and started getting emotional. And I said, "Marco, I don't know if this is going to really work because I have been a military kid my whole life. I move a lot, and I'm going to go to Naples, and you're here, and that's a lot of back and forth, and I just don't think I can do it. I need somewhere where I can plant my roots."

 

He literally bent down into the dirt. He picked a little bit up, held my hand, and said, "Plant your roots here with me."

 

Gimmillaro-Vineyard.jpg


Tell us how the vineyard evolved.

It was just a plot of land he was making patronale with, like garage wine. It's what the locals make for themselves.

 

As a Californian, I had a little knowledge of what people want when they go to a vineyard, especially somewhere like Santa Ynez Valley or Temecula. We're expecting meals, a beautiful wine tasting, and sometimes just a flight and just sitting there and enjoying the view. But definitely some customer service and a learning experience.


One of the things I noticed while doing some reconnaissance wine tastings around here was that nobody was having people come and do the harvest just for fun. There were opportunities to do a grape stomp, but nobody was being allowed to do real hands-on. And I thought, "Why is there some legal reason?"


Marco looked it up and said, "Actually, there is a legal reason. There need to be 'tutors,' and the work must be declared."


And I was like, "Well, how do you declare this work?" Marco explained that it would need to be a "demo."

 

I said, "So, we can do it. We're not going to get in trouble if we have people come, and we could even give them a barbecue." He said, "Correct, because the product is separate from the main production. Then they've done the work, and we can show them how to make a patronale."

 

I was like, "Oh, Marco, Americans would love that!"


And so we've come up with this from the reconnaissance and knowing nobody else was doing any kind of meaningful hands-on at the level people really wanted. Having a tour of a beautiful vineyard and a beautiful winery with all this professional equipment isn't educational. It's a tour of something already established and expensive. But people who want to know how to grow and produce wine are not really learning how to do it. So we came up with a year of vinification, a year of wine, which is all the processes.

 
So we have a harvest. It starts with that. We bring people out, they harvest, and we separate, we squish, and then we transport to the place where we do the vinification with those people, and then we give them a barbecue.

 

maceration.jpg

 

The next process is turning the grapes, the maceration. When it's in the containers with the skins, you can't just let it sit there; you have to move it around. Could I make an event out of that? Possibly. We haven't yet.


Then, the next process is moving the liquids to the travaso and then bottling, and it still has to sit in the bottle for a while. So, I thought, "I'll have another event where we do a wine tasting, and we invite the people that came to the vendemmia and say, 'Let's go bottle your wine, and we'll have a party.'"


We had a wine bottling event, and about 12 people showed up. Five of them had been to the vendemmia before. They absolutely loved the thought that their effort had gone into the bottles and the liquid they were bottling.

 
We let them do the hand bottling because we didn't have the machine. We just filled it up with a tap, and it dripped everywhere. It was such a mess, but everybody had the best time!


After the fact, I thought, okay, what do people really like the most? Did they care about the food? No, they cared about the experience they weren't getting anywhere else. And I was like, "How can I turn this into a moneymaker?"

 

Gimmillaro-Vineyard-view.jpg


What challenges have you faced along the way?

It's been a process of trying to find out how I can market this because if I deal with just Italians, there's a lack of interest around here. The foreigners are where I am focusing, especially the people from the base here, who speak English, and I know what they want. The problem is they require things that most tourists or expats wouldn't because they live here and they have to deal with the roads. And some of them are very homebody. So I was like, "Well, I have to rent a van or get a bus and have an event. And I've got to calculate that into the cost of the whole thing."

 

I did a vendemmia with 60 people. I had a 30-person van and another 30-person van. I had to eat the cost because 15 people didn't show, and I still had to pay for that or otherwise ask the other people to pay more after the fact. And that was like, "I'm not going to do that." I'm learning on the job.

 
We finally have a vintage. We have a 2022, and we lost all of our grapes at our primary vineyard in 2023 due to a fungal blight, but we had a secondary vineyard that we bought grapes for as an experiment, so we technically have a 2023 as well. We are not going to label it. We're going to keep it a patronale because, legally, it's not registered on our land, so we can't sell it that way. We can sell it as a patronale, though.

 
So we technically have two vintages, and this year, we're going to have a white. And I'm trying to stick to the guns here and be a completely bio vineyard. It makes your job exponentially more difficult. You're highly volatile. Your processes have to be dead on. There are certification processes and criteria that need to be adhered to in order to qualify.

 
White has been very hard. We've lost it every year for the last five years. It gets skunky so fast. The summers have been unusually hot. We don't have a temperature-controlled environment, and we are off-grid, which is again part of our process of having a bio vineyard. This year, we are working with a nearby cantina to be sure to follow the white properly.


We could get a business loan, dredge the land out, get some water flow from the city, have a sewer line put in, and do some irrigation, as well as all the things we need to have what the other big vineyards are doing. But we're trying to be off-grid to show people that it can be done and can be done well. A lot of times, when these producers grow their production, they just abandon those simpler ways in favor of the more efficient industrialized vinification styles. And while those are great, we're just trying to be as authentic and practical as possible.

 

Gimmillaro-Vineyard-son-walking.jpg

 

What are your plans for the future?

We are working up to more events as we develop different wines. For instance, we want to do a sparkling wine in the future. Of course, we want to keep the demo vendemmia. The best way to teach people about wine is to let them help create the basic/patronale wines and also let them work on the vineyard.

 

We have hosted several groups from the Sigonella base to volunteer their time for community service credits with their command. They come on weekends and prune or plant cover crops on the terraces. Not only is this helpful for the vineyard, but it's also a way to get our name out there as a place where you can really learn about the wine industry.

 

Gimmillaro-Vineyard-wine-view.jpg

 

What experience do you hope to share?

The ups and the downs. I want people to see that it doesn't mean you're wealthy to have a vineyard. It just means you're putting effort into something and trying to make it great. And sometimes, it fails. And what is the outcome? I'm going to try to pull myself up like they say, "by my bootstraps," get back up, and start going and keep it going. I'm not giving up.


A lot of times, people just think that every year, the wine's going to taste the same as last year, even though you have these wine tastings, and everybody says, "This is 2022. It has more berry flavor; these are the same grapes on the same land. This is 2023, and it tastes woodier, blah, blah."


It does taste different. I can't even explain why it tastes so different from one year to the next or why we have the same grape varieties. They're separated by three miles and taste completely different.

 
It's a beautiful thing, and I can see why people get so wrapped up in wine and everything about it. It's a challenge, and it's unbelievably rewarding. It is a science and an art. And then again, it's farming, so it's extremely volatile.

 
People have so many little experiments up on Etna. We are friends with this neighbor, and he's trying to make a sparkling out of a grape that nobody would've made a sparkling out of before. And he is like, "I'm going to do it. It's going to be amazing." And I love that positivity.

 
So when I have people come, and I am showing them all the work we've done, I'm not here for the applause. I'm here because it's like when I was a teacher, and I had a child that was very difficult, and other people were just constantly giving up on this child. How cruel is that to just give up on a child? It's finding that path out and finding another direction to do something. And that's what makes wine special: everybody has a different process.  

 

Courage-wine.jpg

 

 

 

 

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