Downtown Nashville's Yolan restaurant is pouring wines grown on the slopes of an active volcano this Saturday, when its monthly tasting series returns to Sicily for a session called Sicily Wine Tasting: Forged by Fire. The $85 event runs from 4 p.m. in the restaurant's private dining room at The Joseph, A Luxury Collection Hotel, and centers on wines from Mount Etna, one of the world's most celebrated wine-growing regions shaped by ancient lava flows and dramatic elevation changes.
The tasting offers a guided exploration of Etna's terroir, history, and traditions, led by Yolan's wine team, according to Nashville Lifestyles. Guests get a guided, hour-long tasting of four regional wines paired with artisanal cheeses, according to StyleBlueprint, with tickets priced exclusive of tax and gratuity. Mount Etna is also serving as inspiration for Yolan's new seasonal menu, tying the tasting directly to what is on the kitchen's plates this season.
A Series That Began Five Years Ago in the Same Region
Saturday's event is part of Yolan's monthly wine and spirits series, which explores wine regions, traditions, and stories one country or region at a time. The program actually launched in March 2021 with a focus on Sicilian wines, meaning this weekend's tasting marks a return to the very region that started it all, per the same account from Nashville Lifestyles. The series was designed around intimate Saturday afternoon tastings paired with small bites, and it has since expanded across Italy's major winemaking regions under the leadership of wine expert Cathy Mantuano and lead sommelier Jon Kearns, the outlet reported.
Cathy Mantuano runs the program alongside her husband, Chef Tony Mantuano, who directs Yolan's culinary and beverage operations. He won the 2005 James Beard Award for Best Chef Midwest and held a Michelin star at Chicago's Spiaggia before the couple relocated to Nashville in 2020, according to their own account of the transition, as detailed by Authority Magazine. Cathy Mantuano is also the co-author of the cookbook *Wine Bar Food*.
Inside The Joseph, Where Art and Wine Share the Building
Yolan operates inside The Joseph, the 21-story, 297-room luxury hotel that opened in downtown Nashville's SoBro neighborhood in August 2020. The property was developed by The Pizzuti Companies and named for family patriarch Joseph Pizzuti, according to a release distributed via PR Newswire. The hotel showcases more than 1,000 original art pieces from the Pizzuti family collection, giving the tasting room a backdrop as curated as the wine list itself.
What Makes Etna's Volcanic Wines Distinct
The tasting features Nerello Mascalese and Carricante wines, the two grapes that define Etna's identity. Nerello Mascalese is the volcano's primary red grape, comprising 80% to 85% of Etna Rosso blends; wine critics frequently compare it to Pinot Noir or Barolo for its pale ruby color, floral aromas, and firm tannins, according to Sicilian producer Benanti Viticoltori. Carricante, by contrast, is Etna's primary indigenous white grape, grown at cooler high elevations to produce dry Etna Bianco wines prized for high acidity, citrus notes, and flinty minerality, per research from EnoCodex.
Etna's volcanic soils impart freshness, minerality, and complexity to its wines, a signature that traces back to the mountain itself. Vineyards within the Etna DOC sit at elevations ranging from 450 meters to over 1,000 meters above sea level, where extreme swings between daytime and nighttime temperatures add structure to the grapes, EnoCodex notes. Mount Etna is Europe's most active volcano, and its high-silica, sandy volcanic soil kept the root-destroying phylloxera louse from taking hold in the late 19th century — preserving some of Europe's rare surviving ungrafted, pre-phylloxera vines, some of them over a century old, according to Flatiron Wines & Spirits.
A Region Governed Like Burgundy
Etna DOC was established by presidential decree in September 1968, making it Sicily's first official Denominazione di Origine Controllata designation and one of the oldest regulated wine appellations in Italy, spanning 20 municipalities around the volcano, per WineWiki. In 2011, the appellation formally codified legally recognized single-vineyard sub-zones called contrade — since expanded to 142 in recent topographical surveys — letting winemakers label bottles according to specific soil compositions and historical lava flows, according to Consorzio Etna DOC. That level of terroir-specific classification has drawn comparisons to Burgundy's cru system, giving Nashville drinkers a taste of a wine-growing tradition built on centuries of volcanic history in a single Saturday afternoon downtown.
