Producer · Sicily, Italy

Barone Montalto

Barone Montalto is a Sicilian brand whose home ground is the Valle del Belice, inland from Trapani in the west of the island. That is a hot, dry, bright part of Sicily, and the wines that come out of it are built for generosity rather than restraint.

It helps to know who is behind it. Barone Montalto is not a small family estate. It is a brand of MGM Mondo del Vino SpA, a company based at Forlì in Emilia-Romagna with operations at Priocca in Piedmont, and MGM in turn is part of Argea SpA, one of the largest wine groups in Italy. That is no criticism. Groups of that size are a large part of why clean, correct, varietally honest Sicilian wine reaches UK shelves at a fair price, and being consistent across vintages is genuinely harder than making one good bottle. What you get is a well-run brand rather than a single grower's plot, and that is a perfectly good thing to be.

The range is broader than most people realise. There is a top tier of Sicilia DOC wines, a pair of Etna DOC wines from the other end of the island entirely, and a single-variety line that runs from Syrah, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon to Nerello Mascalese, Grillo, Viognier and Zibibbo. The everyday tier is Terre Siciliane IGT and covers Nero d'Avola, Grillo, Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio among others. There is also a dried-grape line and a sparkling range.

Alongside all of that sit some organic wines, which include Sicilian varieties such as Catarratto, a white grape that most people have never knowingly drunk and that is well worth getting to know. The everyday end of the range is the heart of it: honest, easy wines of the kind you open on a summer evening without thinking twice.

Winery at Santa Ninfa, Sicily · Pinot Gris and Catarratto · £12.66 a bottle