Mr. Harvey’s Italian business is quite different. It has its own name, Aeris, and apart from the grapes grown in Sonoma, it has two vineyards on Etna, where it grows grapes and makes wines in collaboration with Salvo Foti, who has played a pivotal role in the revival of the traditional Etna. viticulture and wine production over the past 25 years.
Mr. Harvey has always been devoted to nebbiolo, the great grape mainly associated with Barolo and Barbaresco, but it was his discovery of carricante that sealed the Aeris deal. As he tells it, he was in Italy with his wife 17 years ago, when he stopped in a shop full of wines he’d never tasted before. One of these was a Pietra Marina from Benanti from 2001, an Etna Bianco Superiore made by Mr. Foti, entirely of carricante.
“We drank it and it was revealing,” said Mr. Harvey as we walked through the young rows of Sonoma carricante. “It was as if grand cru Burgundy and grand cru Alsace Riesling met. That really fascinated me.”
He tracked down Mr. Foti and they met.
“We were talking about carricante,” recalls Mr. Harvey. “What struck me was how little there was, maybe 10 hectares in 2010.
“There were so few examples, and I wondered, why not some carricante plants? Salvo had a great plan, but couldn’t afford it. “Let’s talk,” I said.”
In 2016, Mr. photo and mr. Harvey a 15 hectare carricante vineyard in Milo on the east side of Etna, the main carricante area.
“I didn’t mean to own a vineyard, but I didn’t do it to be rational,” said Mr. Harvey.
Mr. Foti, called ‘the high priest of native grapes’ by Mr. Harvey, was also on Etna in search of ancient high-altitude vineyards of nerello mascalese. When he found largely abandoned century-old vines at 2,000 to 3,000 feet on the north side of Mount Etna near the town of Montelaguardia, Mr. Harvey intervenes. Aeris had another Etna vineyard.
