Our friends at Social Wines offer a little lesson in wine:

Nero d’Avola, grown in the town of Avola in the southeast corner of Sicily, is a dark black grape also known as Calabrese. It is the most widely planted red grape in Sicily. With its rich tannin and medium acidity levels and flavors of plum, black fruit and cocoa, it makes for a great varietal to age in barrel and to blend.

It has taken Nero d’Avola a long time to hit the mainstream because of the crazy European laws that tell grape growers how much they can grow. Nero d’Avola and many other varietals were not used to make wine but instead to make grape concentrate. This concentrate has had many uses, mostly to flavor cheap wine and as a blend for other fruit juices. But on its own, it can make fabulous wine! Read more about Nero d’Avola, and one of our favorites, here: http://SocialWinesBOS.com/great-sips/2015/nero-davola