Sicily
Lava, citrus and a volcano that watches.
Etna isn't a mountain, it's a condition. 3,300 metres, active, with a plume of smoke you can see from Catania, and slopes where wine grows that in twenty years has gone from peasant wine to one of Europe's most interesting. Nerello Mascalese, Carricante — names to remember.
The east coast below is citrus country: Riposto, Giarre, Acireale, towns of black lava stone with baroque façades. The estates — the palmenti where wine used to be pressed — are now houses you sleep in.
Taormina is an hour away and a stage set in summer. Catania is honest, loud and has the island's best fish market. Syracuse, two hours south, is Greece.
Sicily is too big for a week. Etna is enough.
We send people to Etna, not to Taormina. The mountain gives the trip a direction; the town takes it away. ZASH near Riposto is the house for it: sixteen rooms in an old winery between lava and sea, the restaurant in the former palmento, 130,000 square metres of citrus garden. Sixteen rooms, no seventeenth. Come in May when the citrus trees bloom, or in October for the harvest on Etna. Drive up the mountain on a clear morning, with a jacket.
