Carricante: The Volcanic White That Ages Like Great Riesling

Carricante is pronounced kah-ree-KAHN-teh.

If you love dry Riesling for its nerve and its ability to age, Carricante is the grape you have not met yet.

It grows on the black volcanic slopes of Mount Etna, in vineyards that climb past 900 meters, some of the highest in Europe. The altitude and the volcanic soil give it two things most whites never get together: screaming natural acidity and a mineral character that tastes like the ground it came from. For years it was an afterthought, blended down and sold cheap. Now it is one of the most serious white wines in Italy, and it still costs a fraction of what its quality would suggest.

What it tastes like

Start with the acidity, because it runs the show. Carricante is high-acid and low-pH, which is a technical way of saying it makes your mouth water and keeps the wine feeling alive from the first sip to the last.

Around that spine you get green apple, lemon zest, unripe pear, and white flowers, with an almond-skin bitterness on the finish that reads as savory rather than sweet. Underneath all of it is the volcanic signature: a saline, flinty, faintly smoky minerality that comes from the ash and lava the vines are rooted in.

Young Carricante is lean and tightly wound. Give a good bottle three to five years and it changes character entirely, growing waxy and rounder, sometimes developing a kerosene note that Riesling drinkers will recognize on sight. That capacity to improve in bottle is rare in a white this affordable, and it is the whole reason to pay attention.

Why Etna hid it for so long

Carricante is native to Etna and grown almost nowhere else. The name comes from the Italian caricare, to load, a nod to how heavily the vine yields when nobody reins it in. That reputation for high yields is exactly why it spent decades as a workhorse, cropped hard and blended into anonymous local white for the tables of Catania.

The turnaround came when a handful of growers realized what the old vines and high altitude were actually capable of. The top designation, Etna Bianco Superiore, can only be made in the commune of Milo on the mountain's cooler eastern face, and it must be at least 80 percent Carricante. Those are the wines that proved the grape could stand with Europe's best whites.

It stays overlooked mostly because of scale. Etna is a small region, the vineyards are steep and hard to work, and the grape is a mouthful of a name that no supermarket buyer wants to explain. That is the underdog's usual problem: not a lack of quality, just a lack of volume and a hard word to say.

Bottles to look for

Benanti is the benchmark, and their single-vineyard Pietra Marina, an Etna Bianco Superiore from Milo, is the wine most often cited when people argue Carricante belongs in the top rank of Italian whites. It is also the most expensive, so treat it as the aspirational bottle rather than the everyday one.

For a first taste, look to producers making straight Etna Bianco: Benanti's entry-level bottling, Pietradolce, Graci, Tornatore, and Girolamo Russo all make honest, well-priced versions that show the grape without a splurge. Any of these will tell you whether Carricante is for you.

Here is the honest part. Carricante is not an easy first date. Young and cheap, it can taste austere, closed, even a little hard, and there is no single consensus score I can hand you as a shortcut to the right bottle. You are buying a grape that rewards patience and a producer's name more than a number. If you want instant charm, this is not it. If you want tension and length, few whites at the price deliver more.

Where to buy

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Carricante has real US distribution now, mostly through specialty shops and wine-focused retailers rather than grocery aisles. Search by grape name or by "Etna Bianco" and you will usually turn up at least a few options.

browse Carricante on Wine.com →

— Chris Berry

If you're switching from a famous grape

If dry Riesling is your white, Carricante is the lateral move worth making: same bone-dry build, same racy acidity, same reward for cellaring, with volcanic salt where Riesling gives you slate and lime. Pour them side by side and the family resemblance is immediate. Buy the Riesling for the aromatics; buy the Carricante when you want something almost nobody at the table will recognize.

See Wines Like Riesling and Order This Instead.

Part of Lesser-Known Wines: 17 Obscure Grapes Worth Switching To — the full underdog-swap guide.