Day 13 - Marsala, Segesta and Trapani

We left our hotel this morning and headed to a tour of the Cantine Florio two hours away in Marsala. Cantine Florio is one of oldest wineries in Sicily (1833) and is known for its production of Marsala wine, all in the same winery located right by the sea. We had what turned out to be a private tour (only the two of us signed up for the tour in English) and we learned a lot. The basis for Marsala is the Grillo grape, which is grown in this area, and the Grillo wine is then fortified and aged for a minimum period of time depending on the type of Marsala. There is no maximum time as Marsala never goes bad. We tasted four types of wine and considering it was 10 am, they were all really good. They ranged from an aperitif, to two table wines and finally to a dessert Marsala.

Goad Herd with the Right of Way

From Marsala we drove out to Salemi via SS188 through the wine country of this part of Sicily. This part of Sicily in many ways is the old Sicily of a hundreds of years ago. There are vineyards as far as you can see, interspersed with groves of olive trees and ancient farmhouses.  We saw one very old man, with his car parked by the road, hand-picking olives and putting them in a cloth bag he had around his neck. We hoped that those were his olive tree! Of course we had to stop to let a goat herd pass by at one point, complete with a shepherd and three herding dogs. This is not to say that there aren't signs for modern civilization as we also passed about a hundred windmills generating electric power.

Temple at Segesta

From Salemi we went northward to Segesta which is close by. Segesta was a minor Greek city when the Greeks occupied Sicily. The temple dates back to 420 BCE but was apparently never completed. There is also a very nice amphitheater on the hill above the temple.

As has been our luck with visiting Greek ruins, the skies became cloudy and it began to rain just as we got back to our car.

Our final stop today was at the Salt Museum just outside of Trapani and within walking distance of our hotel. This area is all "saline" or salt pans for miles around and salt has been harvested from sea water here for thousands of years and is still done today. What was done in the past by a large team of people doing manual labor is now done by 10 people. Salt was so important during the Roman period that people were paid in salt and that is the derivation of our word "salary."

I can't show the operation in a single picture but there are five salt ponds (called pans) used in the operation with the last pan the one where the salt is harvested from. As you can see in the picture that windmills were used to pump water between pans and also to grind the salt into a finer consistency. Today electric pumps and other machinery have streamlined the operation.

Tonight we ate at the restaurant now located inside the mill. Jeanne had pasta and I had fish served with couscous. Couscous is popular in the area around Trapani where the Arab influence is still heavy in the food of the region.