Travels in Sicily: 16. Mt. Etna

Thursday, Oct 24th. We're headed to Mt. Etna, then a winery tour and then Taormina where we will spend the last day of our tour. As we head down the autostrada, we can see Mt Etna in the distance as in this photo.

Our tour guide, Nicole, kept us informed, educated and entertained as we headed to our next stop. Here she is this morning talking to us about what to expect when we get to the volcano.

The entertainment consisted of jokes and music, music like this Sicilian donkey song that we would do almost anything to not hear again: Sicilian Donkey Song. Don't know if this the same one but it's close enough.

The gateway to Mt. Etna is the town of Nicolosi as they proudly announce on the arch leading into town.

And here is there church, no great edifice but very important to the town.

And here we are on the flanks of Mt. Etna. Mt. Etna is what is know as a stratovolcano, that means that it is built up in layers over many years, in this case Etna started forming about 500,000 years ago off the ancient coastline of Sicily. Western Sicily is not volcanic and was formed when limestone was forced up from the bottom of the Mediterranean millions of years ago. As Mt. Etna grew it joined and greatly enlarged Sicily. It sits on the subduction zone between the African plate and the Eurasian plate. The United Nations' International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior has designated Mt. Etna as a Decade Volcano which means it is one of 16 world wide judged as being worthy of particular study in light of their history of large, destructive eruptions and proximity to populated areas. It is the largest of the three active volcanoes in Italy and is about 2-1/2 times larger the Mt. Vesuvius. It is the second largest in the European-North African region. It is just under 11,000 feet high but the height varies depending on volcanic activity.

It is not your typical volcano with a cone and a crater at the top. It actually has five distinct craters at the top and more than 300 vents on its flanks ranging from small holes to caldera hundreds of meters across. In fact, the locals don't worry much about the craters on the top as the eruptions that come from them don't bother them. What they worry about is eruptions from the flanks as these are much closer to them and the lava that comes out of the flanks moves faster and goes farther then that from the peak. If you look carefully, you can see steam coming from one of the top craters, remember that.

Surrounding Mt. Etna are many lava fields, here is a photo of one we got close to.

You can probably get this house pretty cheap as it was buried in a lava flow.

Here you can get and idea on the size of the lava fields and also see the cable car lift that takes you almost to the top.

Here is one of the hiking trails that you can take to see one of the craters on the flank.

Here is a relatively small crater.

Here is a larger crater.

Here is another small one but you can tell that it is more recent as they start out black and then lighten and turn red as the iron in the lava rusts.

Another view of the extensive lava fields. Once again you can tell which are the more recent by their color.

The building in this photo is the Sapienza Refuge which is the main tourist area on this side of the volcano. It has had to be rebuilt several times as the result of damage from lava flows. It is also where you get the cable car that takes you closer to the summit.

More hiking trails and lava fields.

On our way down the mountain we came across these abandoned buildings. The lava from the volcano makes very fertile ground for growing grapes and other produce but at the risk of being forced out by another lava flow.

After leaving Mt. Etna, we stopped at the Tenuta San Michele which is home to the Murgo Winery for lunch and a tour of the winery. Here is a photo of us having lunch. Great food and lots of it. Pat has even gotten used to eating eggplant, seems like we had caponata at every meal (no complaints from me).

Here is our tour guide, Nicole, really enjoying a discussion with the restaurant operator.

Here is our winery guide.

Here are some large wine casks for aging what is know locally as Etna Rossa.

Here is our guide explaining the process of riddling to remove the sediment from sparkling wine.

When sparkling wines or champagnes were first produced, the wine had a cloudy appearance due to the yeast that was added to carbonate the wine. In the early 1800s, Madame Nicole-Barbe Clicquot who owned Champagne Clicquot didn't like this so she developed a process where the wine was stored neck down as in riddling rack like this one.

The bottles are given a small shake and turned every couple of days. After the sediment had a chance to settle in the neck of the bottle, the wine in the neck is quickly frozen by immersing only the neck in a very cold solution. The bottle is then opened, the sediment plug removed and the bottle quickly resealed. This process is basically unchanged 200 years later except now they use machines to jostle and turn the wine bottles instead of by hand. Here is a large number of bottles of wine aging in the wine cellar.

Here is the machinery that puts the labels on the bottles. This used to be done by hand but with production at this winery of about 20,000 bottles a year doing it by hand got pretty tedious.