My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
$99
4 Hours
Activity Level 2
NCL Description:
Sample Sicily’s world-renowned wines at the esteemed Tenuta San Michele winery, which nestles on the fertile lands at the base of Mount Etna. You’ll appreciate a scenic journey through the verdant farmlands and vineyards of eastern Sicily to Tenuta San Michele, a distinguished winery that takes full advantage of the region’s ideal micro-climate of cold winters, temperate summers and abundant rain. You’ll learn the quality of the region’s grapes is further enhanced by the lava soil, which is rich in potassium and mineral salts. Once at the estate, cherish wonderful panoramas of the surrounding landscape afforded by the high elevation. Discover the estate sprawls over 62 acres distributed across large terraces, on which unique Etna varietals are grown, including nerello Mascalese, nerello cappuccio, carricante and catarratto. Join your friendly hosts for a tasting of the estate’s best vintages, enhanced by informative descriptions of the day’s selections. Sip on these opulent and unexpected rewards of Mount Etna’s eruptions and toast your buona fortuna.
Need to Know:
This tour includes limited walking, to reach San Michele Estate. It is not available to guests who utilize a wheelchair. Those guests with mobility concerns are cautioned to evaluate their personal level of ability and stamina. There are some steps to be negotiated inside the Wine Estate and uneven ground to visit the vineyard. Participants must be at least 21 years of age to be served alcoholic beverages.
My Experience:
It was about a 30 minute drive to the winery. The bus let us out at the bottom of a little hill and we walked the .25 miles up the hill to the entrance of the winery. We were given about an hour tour of the winery and showed the different stages of the process to make the wine. The tour involved some walking and standing for about an hour and included some stairs to navigate.
Once the tour was over, we were taken to a private room with lots of windows for us to look out onto the vineyard and given our wine tasting. It was kind of disappointing that we only got to try small samples of 3 wines- a red wine, white wine and sparkling wine. We were also given some bread, tapenade, bread sticks and olive oil to snack on while we wine tasted. The employees pouring the wine were very knowledgeable and gave us a few extra pours once everyone had their wine. After the wine tasting we were given about an hour to explore the grounds, take pictures and shop for wine and olive oil to take home in the gift shop.
Overall it was a beautiful vineyard and a fun, relaxing day. I gave this excursion 4 stars out of 5 because I wish they had a few more wine options for us to try and a better spread of snacks for the $99 price.