Wine Tours from Syracuse

Q: Are there wineries near Syracuse?

Yes, half an hour south in the Val di Noto. Ramaddini near Marzamemi runs a $49 Val di Noto tasting (4.8 / 5 from 10 reviews) and a $29 three-wine tasting; the guided Val di Noto tasting ($59) pours four wines with local pairings; Terre di Noto ($134) adds a light lunch. All are cellar-door visits without transport. The Etna wineries are an hour and a half north and are reached on guided day tours.

Q: Can I do an Etna wine tour from Syracuse?

Yes, two operators run it. The Etna trek, wine and food tour ($110, 4.8 / 5 from 202 reviews) includes pick-up, a guided lava-field trek, a cave and a winery tasting. The Etna tour with light lunch and a glass of wine ($138, 4.6 / 5 from 48 reviews) adds full equipment and lunch at a winery. Both are volcano days with wine at the end, not cellar tours; the drive to Etna's south slope is about an hour and a half each way.

Q: Do I need a car for wine tasting near Syracuse?

For the Val di Noto tastings, yes, or a taxi: they are at the estates near Pachino, Marzamemi and Noto and do not include transport. The Etna day tours include pick-up from Syracuse. The Ortigia food-and-wine walks need no transport at all. If nobody wants to drive, the Noto, Marzamemi and Avola day ($406 per group of up to four) provides a driver, though the tasting is paid separately on the day.

Q: How far is Noto from Syracuse?

About 30 kilometres by road, roughly half an hour by car. Buses and trains also run, but the wineries sit outside the town, so a car is the practical way to combine Noto's baroque centre with a tasting. See the Noto wine tours page for the cellar options.

Q: What wine is the Syracuse area known for?

Nero d'Avola. The grape takes its name from Avola, the town just past Noto, and the Val di Noto estates build their tastings around it, usually alongside a white and a sweet wine. The guided Val di Noto tasting talks through the warm-climate, limestone-soil style; Ramaddini pours its own labels with Modica chocolate and cooked must. The Nero d'Avola page goes deeper.

Q: How much do wine tours from Syracuse cost?

From $29 for a three-wine tasting at a Val di Noto estate, $49 to $59 for four-wine tastings with food, $80 to $99 for the Ortigia food-and-wine walks, $110 to $138 for the Etna day tours with pick-up, and $134 for the Noto tasting with lunch. The per-group Noto and Avola day is $406 for up to four people plus the tasting on the day.

Q: Is the Etna tour from Syracuse a wine tour or a hiking tour?

A hiking tour with a tasting. Both Syracuse departures spend the middle of the day trekking lava fields at around 2,000 metres and visiting a cave, then stop at a winery for wine and Sicilian food on the way back. If the wine is the point, either book a Val di Noto tasting instead or base yourself in Catania, where the Etna cellar visits start.

Q: Are there wine tastings on Ortigia itself?

Not a sit-down winery tasting, but two food-and-wine walks. The Sicilian food and wine tour ($99, 5.0 / 5 from 18 reviews) visits the Ortigia market and three eating spots with two Sicilian wines. The three-hour exclusive tasting experience ($80) covers four or more stops with local drinks, usually beer. Read both as food walks first.

Q: What should I wear for the Etna tour from Syracuse?

Closed, sturdy shoes and a jacket. The operators recommend both, and the $138 tour lends hiking shoes, jackets, helmets, torches and poles. It is noticeably colder at 2,000 metres than on the coast, even in summer. People with cardiovascular or respiratory conditions are advised against the higher sections.

Q: When is the best time for a wine tour from Syracuse?

Spring and autumn for both directions. The Val di Noto is very hot in July and August, and the Etna trek is more comfortable outside midsummer. Nero d'Avola harvest in the south-east runs from late August into September. Every tour here can be cancelled free up to 24 hours before, so check a date and adjust if the forecast changes.

Featured Tour

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Featured Tour

From Siracusa: Etna Tour with Trek, Wine and Food

The most-reviewed departure from Syracuse: hotel pick-up, a guided trek on Etna's south slope, a lava cave and a winery tasting with local produce.

From $110 per person
4.8 / 5 from 202 reviews
7.5 hours
Free cancellation

Highlights

Guided trek of about two and a half hours on Etna's southern slopes with a certified guide
Sicilian food tasting with local wines at a winery on the mountain
Small-group format in an air-conditioned jeep or SUV
Pick-up and drop-off in Syracuse and the surrounding area included
Trekking poles, a bottle of water and a multilingual guide in the price

What's Included

Pick-up and drop-off in Syracuse and surrounding areas
Transport in an air-conditioned vehicle
Multilingual guide
Trekking guide
Trekking poles
Wine tasting
Tasting of local products
One bottle of water

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How a Wine Day from Syracuse Works

North to the volcano or south to the Val di Noto, in four steps.

Pick a direction
Etna is about an hour and a half north by road; Noto is about half an hour south. The Etna days are full days with pick-up. The Val di Noto tastings are short cellar visits you drive to.
Etna: trek first, taste second
The Syracuse Etna tours collect you in the morning, walk lava fields at around 2,000 metres, visit a cave with helmets and torches, then stop at a winery on the way back for wine and Sicilian food.
Val di Noto: one estate, one hour
The tastings around Pachino, Marzamemi and Noto are about an hour at the winery: a cellar tour, three or four wines built on Nero d'Avola, and a plate of local pairings.
Or stay on Ortigia
Two food-and-wine walks work the market and the alleys of Ortigia with three or four stops each. No transport, no driving, and back at your hotel by mid-afternoon or after dinner.

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Photo Gallery

From Ortigia to the Volcano

Etna's south slope, the Val di Noto vineyards and the market stalls of Syracuse.

Mount Etna with a plume of smoke rising from the summit, seen above the rooftops of Catania — Etna above Catania. The volcano is the vineyard on Sicily's east side, and the closest wine region to the city.

A night-time eruption of Mount Etna with a fountain of red lava against a black sky — Etna at night. Several tours pair a crater walk with a winery tasting on the way down.

A long vaulted cellar corridor lined on both sides with stacked oak barrels, lit warmly — The Florio cellars in Marsala, where fortified wine has been aged since 1833.

Flat salt pans and a stone windmill under a wide sky on the coast between Trapani and Marsala — The salt pans between Trapani and Marsala. Day trips from Palermo bundle them with a winery.

A sunlit whitewashed courtyard with palms inside a traditional Marsala wine estate — A historic Marsala baglio, the walled farm-and-cellar complex the west coast's wineries grew out of.

Two glasses of wine and a bottle beside a blue ceramic pine cone on a table in the Val di Noto — Nero d'Avola country. Tastings around Noto and Marzamemi come with a Sicilian spread.

A visitor standing between rows of vines at a winery near Ragusa in bright sunshine — Vines near Ragusa, in the Cerasuolo di Vittoria area, Sicily's only DOCG.

Rows of aged wine bottles resting in wooden racks inside a dim cellar — The cellar walk comes before the wine on almost every tour compared here.

A dense cluster of dark blue-black grapes hanging among autumn-coloured vine leaves — Ripe red grapes. Sicily's harvest runs from late summer into October.

A hand cutting a bunch of dark grapes into a wicker basket in a vineyard — Harvest is the busiest and best time to visit an estate.

A long dining table laid with glasses on wine barrels between rows of vines — A vineyard lunch. On food-and-wine tours the meal is the point, not the extra.

A hand raising a glass of white wine beneath a pergola heavy with ripe grapes — The white goes first. Carricante on Etna, Grillo in the west.

Guests at an outdoor table in a Palermo street with glasses of wine and small plates — A tasting room in Palermo: five wines and Sicilian snacks, no car needed.

A man and a woman tasting red wine at a table with a bottle and a laptop, vines behind — A private tasting. Small estates often host you at the family table.

A wooden wine barrel standing at the end of a grassy alley between trained vine rows — Trained rows on a modern estate. Older Sicilian vineyards still keep bush-trained alberello vines.

Young vines on posts under a bright blue sky with white clouds — Early summer in the vineyard, the quietest and greenest time to visit.

Etna Day, Val di Noto Tasting, or Ortigia Food Walk?

The three shapes of a wine day from Syracuse, side by side.

Feature	OUR PICK Etna Trek, Wine & Food	Val di Noto Tasting at Ramaddini	Siracusa Food & Wine Tour
Starting Price	From $110/per person	From $49/person	From $99/person
Rating	4.8 / 5 (202 reviews)	4.8 / 5 (10 reviews)	5.0 / 5 (18 reviews)
Direction	North — Etna south slope	South — Marzamemi, Val di Noto	Ortigia, on foot
Transport	Pick-up from Syracuse included	Drive yourself to the estate	None needed
Wine	Winery tasting after the trek	4 estate wines, Nero d'Avola-led	2 Sicilian wines across 3 stops
Food	Local produce tasting, water	Fava beans, cured meats, cheeses, Modica chocolate	Market and 3 typical eating spots
Time	Full day	About 1 hour at the winery	Half day
Best for	Seeing Etna with wine at the end	Wine as the point of the day	Staying in town, food first
	Check Availability	View Tour	View Tour

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ETNA · MOST REVIEWED

Taormina: Guided Etna Wine Tasting Half-Day Tour

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MARSALA · FLORIO

Marsala: Florio Winery Tour with Food-Paired Wine Tastings

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NOTO · NERO D'AVOLA

Marzamemi: Val di Noto Wine Tour, Wine Tasting & Aperitif

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WINERY LUNCH

Catania: Etna Urban Winery Sicilian Lunch with Wine Tasting

Three-course Sicilian lunch with four Etna wines at a 1790 walled winery inside Catania, urban vineyards after. From $73. Rated 4.9 by 84 guests.

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PRIVATE

Private and Guided 3 Etna Wineries with Food & Wine

Private Etna wine day from Taormina or Catania: three estates, ten wines, food included, hotel or port pick-up. From $325 per person. Rated 4.9 by 103 guests.

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FOOD & WINE · PALERMO

Palermo: Wine Tasting with Snacks at Bottega Monteleone

Seated tasting of 5 Sicilian wines with matching tapas in a central Palermo wine bar. From $51, rated 4.8 from 924 reviews. 2 hours, free cancellation.

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Where to Taste

Explore Sicily Wine Tours by Area

Sicily has four distinct wine regions and four practical bases. Start with the region you want to taste, or the city you are sleeping in — the tours sort themselves from there.

Volcanic reds & whites · east

Mount Etna

Cellar visits, Etna DOC tastings and vineyard lunches on the slopes of an active volcano — the widest choice of wine tours on the island.

Compare Etna wine tours →

Fortified wine & the west coast

Marsala

Historic Marsala cellars, Grillo and the salt-pan coast — winery tours and tastings in western Sicily, most within reach of Palermo and Trapani.

Compare Marsala wine tours →

Nero d'Avola country · south-east

Noto & Val di Noto

Nero d'Avola at the source: small estates around Noto, Avola and Marzamemi, usually paired with a baroque town and a long lunch.

Compare Noto wine tours →

Etna's north slope in an hour

Taormina Departures

Half-day tastings, two-winery days and full volcano-and-wine tours leaving Taormina, Giardini Naxos and Letojanni each morning.

Tours from Taormina →

Closest city to the volcano

Catania Departures

Urban wineries in the city, Etna's south slope, sunset tastings and full-day crater-and-wine tours — the shortest transfers of any base.

Tours from Catania →

Gateway to the west

Palermo Departures

Wine tastings in the city, plus day trips to Marsala, Erice and the western estates — the right base for Sicily's fortified-wine country.

Tours from Palermo →

Syracuse Base

Choosing a Wine Tour from Syracuse

Volcano north or Nero d'Avola south, and what each direction costs you in hours.

Syracuse is the only base in Sicily with two wine regions in opposite directions. Half an hour south is the Val di Noto, home ground of Nero d’Avola (the grape is named after Avola, ten minutes past Noto). An hour and a half north is Etna. The tours from the city split the same way, and they are very different days.

North: the Etna days

The Etna trek, wine and food tour from Siracusa is the most-reviewed departure from the city: $110, 4.8 / 5 from 202 reviews. Pick-up from Syracuse and the surrounding area, a guided trek across lava fields on the south slope with poles provided, a cave, then a winery tasting with local produce and a bottle of water. It is a volcano day with wine at the end, and the reviews read that way. Our breakdown →

The Etna tour with light lunch and a glass of wine ($138, 4.6 / 5 from 48 reviews) is the same shape with more equipment: hiking shoes, jackets, helmets and torches are included, the group travels in 8-seater vehicles, and lunch is at a winery near the 2001 and 2002 lava flows. Pick-up is between 8:00 and 8:15. Vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options are available if you say so at booking.

Both are honest about what they are. If you want a wine day rather than a volcano day, the Etna cellar tastings are better reached from Catania, which is under an hour closer.

South: the Val di Noto

The tastings around Pachino, Marzamemi and Noto are the opposite format: short, cheap, at the estate, and you drive there.

The Val di Noto wine tour at Ramaddini ($49, 4.8 / 5 from 10 reviews) is a cellar tour and four wines with fried fava beans and chickpeas, cured meats, cheeses, bruschetta, Modica chocolate and cooked must; the visit runs about an hour and the estate asks you to book two days ahead. Our breakdown → The shorter FR Lovers tasting at the same winery is $29 for three wines with snacks.

The guided wine tasting in the Val di Noto ($59, 4.5 / 5 from 21 reviews) is four wines with almonds, olives, bread and Feudo Maccari olive oil, pitched at the story of Nero d’Avola on limestone. Our breakdown → And the Terre di Noto tasting with light lunch ($134, 5.0 / 5 from 3 reviews) turns the visit into a meal: vineyard and cellar tour, four labels of your choice, an aperitivo spread, pasta with Sicilian pesto and a cannolo.

If nobody wants to drive, the Noto, Marzamemi and Avola tasting day is priced per group of up to four at $406. It covers pick-up, Noto, the fishing village of Marzamemi and a winery in Avola, but the tasting itself is paid on the day (the operator quotes €15 to €50 per person) and lunch is at your own choice. For four people it is a reasonable private day; for two it is not.

Stay on Ortigia instead

The Sicilian food and wine tour in Siracusa ($99, 5.0 / 5 from 18 reviews) works the Ortigia market and three eating spots with a local tour leader, with two Sicilian wines along the way. Our breakdown → The exclusive Sicilian tasting experience ($80, 4.8 / 5 from 20 reviews) is a three-hour walk with four or more stops (fried fish, arancino, cheeses, granita, cannolo) in a group of up to twelve; the drinks are local and usually beer, so read it as a food walk with a glass, not a wine tasting.

Which one, honestly

If you have one day and a car: a Val di Noto tasting in the morning, Noto’s baroque centre after. If you have one day and no car, and Etna is on the list: the trek-and-winery tour. If you want wine to be the point of the day, the south wins; the Etna days are volcano days. And if you want to stay put, the Ortigia food walk is the best-reviewed thing on this page.

The Val di Noto tastings are compared in more detail on the Noto wine tours and Nero d’Avola wine tours pages. Otherwise, check availability for the featured Etna day.

Guest Reviews

What Syracuse Wine Tour Guests Say

4.8/5 from 202 verified guests

"We glad that we booked this tour because it’s the highlight of our Sicily holiday. Amazing!! Our guide Gabriele was really knowledgeable giving us information about Mt. Etna and the surrounding area. He was also a great driver. We were just a small group of four (myself, my husband and another husband and wife) so he picked us up in a car from Syracuse. It was an unforgettable experience for us to be able to hiked and see stunning views from above and of course the magnificent Mt. Etna. The wine and food tastings after was great. You do have to pay extra if you decided to have a meal (lunch) at the restaurant. I would highly recommended this tour and if I have the chance to go back to Sicily I would definitely go do it again."

"Corrado was a fantastic guide who explained everything about Mount Etna and the surrounding area clearly and enthusiastically. We highly recommend this trip!"

"It was a wonderful experience. The guide, Gabriele, is very knowledgeable and super helpful! Highly recommended!!!!"

"This was the best offer, and it turned out to be so in reality. Gabriele turned out to be a pleasant conversationalist who spoke English well. He is in love with his work and could tell you everything about the volcano that a member of our small multinational group would not have asked. Everything was on time, but without any rush or stress. There was a choice to go up to 2,500 m by cable car (for €54), or he could accompany you on foot (hiking). He provided the gear, which included poles and shoes, and everything was in good condition. During the ascent, he was very attentive to everyone, as the group included people with different fitness levels. He knows everything about Etna and even more! Afterwards, there was a wine, oil, and liqueur tasting. Naturally, in the format of a food tasting, but everything is atmospheric and pleasant. We definitely recommend it! The only regret is that when we were leaving, we got distracted by our belongings and souvenirs from Etna and forgot about the tip for the excellent service. 🤝"

"fantastic trip up Etna, completely personalised to our abilities, friendly and information, would recommend."

"The excursion was truly a wonderful experience. Our guide, Francesco Corbino, was courteous, outgoing, and friendly from the very start. During the car ride, he engaged the whole group with pleasant conversation and interesting facts about the places we were passing through, making the trip interesting in itself. During the excursion, he proved to be very well prepared, clear in his explanations, and always available. He described each section carefully, adding details that made the route even more fascinating. His kindness, his ability to put everyone at ease, and the way he was able to make the most of every moment made this a truly special experience. Highly recommended."

"Our guide Francesco was amazing! Friendly, knowledgeable and informative. The trip far exceeded our expectations. Trekking up Etna was a unique experience made all the better with Francesco as a guide. Wearing trekking shoes helped, will remember longer socks for next time. The visit to the Enoteca was great, fabulous tasting session of wine, food and liqueurs. Will heartily recommend!"

"A good guide, good company, and breathtaking views. Francesco was our attentive guide with a well-structured program. We looked at the public transportation options to Etna in advance, but this activity is much better than traveling privately. It was well worth the price. We didn't have to worry about connections, and we received a lot of extra information along the way. We didn't take the cable car, but we didn't feel like we were missing out. We had plenty to see anyway."

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