Noto Wine Tours

Noto is the baroque town; the wine is made in the flat, hot country south of it, between Noto, Pachino, Marzamemi and Avola. This is where Nero d’Avola took its name, and it is still the grape almost every estate here pours first. The good news for a visitor is that the tastings are cheap by Sicilian standards. The catch is that nearly all of them expect you to arrive under your own steam.

Four ways to taste in the Val di Noto

The cellar-door tasting near Marzamemi. Ramaddini’s Val di Noto tasting is the default answer for most people: a guided tour of the winery and its history, four of the estate’s labels, and an aperitivo of fried beans and chickpeas, bread with the farm’s own olive oil, cured meats and cheeses with jams, bruschetta with dried tomatoes, Modica chocolate and cooked must. It costs $49, is rated 4.8 / 5 from 10 reviews, and the estate says the visit runs about an hour. Our breakdown →

The same estate sells a lighter version, the FR Lovers tasting, at $29: the same cellar tour, three wines instead of four, and a simpler snack of fried beans, chickpeas and bread with oil. If you want the tour and a taste but not a meal, this is the cheapest way into a Val di Noto cellar. Its bigger sibling, the Dioniso tasting at $70, adds a fifth wine, ricotta, olives, caponata and a main course, which is lunch in all but name.

The Nero d’Avola tasting in the Noto countryside. The guided wine tasting in the Val di Noto at $59 is a seated tasting of four wines of the area with almonds, olives, bread and Feudo Maccari olive oil, with pricier options that add Pachino cherry tomatoes, caciocavallo, Palazzolo salami and pistachio. Rated 4.5 / 5 from 21 reviews. Children under four are free and get a cheese board on the child rate, which makes it the easiest of these for families. Our breakdown →

The winery lunch. Terre di Noto’s tasting with light lunch at $134 is a vineyard and cellar visit, four labels of your choice, a long aperitivo, a pasta course and a cannolo. Cozzo del Parroco’s lunch or dinner in the Noto countryside at $139 is a three-course farm meal with one glass of Grillo and one of Nero d’Avola rather than a tasting flight. Both are new listings with very few reviews, so judge them on the menu, which is spelled out in full.

The day with a driver. The Syracuse to Noto, Marzamemi and Avola day is the only option here that includes transport: pick-up in Syracuse, a stop in baroque Noto, the fishing village of Marzamemi, and an afternoon at Tenuta Palmeri in Avola. It is priced at $406 per group of up to four, and the tasting itself is paid separately at the estate, so budget for that on top. For a couple that is expensive; for four people it is roughly the cost of two taxis and it removes the driving question entirely.

The driving question

Every tasting above except the Syracuse day excludes transport, and none of these estates is walkable from Noto. From Syracuse the Marzamemi estates are about an hour by road; from Noto itself, twenty to thirty minutes. Someone has to stay sober. If that is nobody, either book the group day or base yourself in Marzamemi and take a taxi.

If you would rather have the whole day organised and do not mind the volcano being the main event, the wine tours from Syracuse page compares the Etna days that leave from there.

Which wine you are actually tasting

The area’s reds are Nero d’Avola, often labelled under the Eloro DOC or its Pachino subzone, where the red must be at least 80 percent Nero d’Avola. The Noto DOC covers Nero d’Avola and Moscato Bianco, and the sweet Moscato di Noto is the wine the appellation was originally built on. Expect ripe dark fruit, warmth and soft tannin: this is a sun-and-limestone red, not a mountain one. For the cooler, paler style of Sicilian red, Etna is the other side of the island in every sense.

The wider Nero d’Avola page compares tastings of the grape across Sicily, including the Cerasuolo di Vittoria estates near Ragusa. If Noto is a base for two or three days, the best wineries to visit in Sicily guide has the longer list. Otherwise check availability for your dates — the Ramaddini tastings are booked by slot, and two days’ notice is the estate’s own rule.