Wine in Sicily: From the Myth of Dionysus to Today’s Quality Driven Renaissance

Sicily has been one of the Mediterranean’s key wine regions since pre‑Roman times and, at the same time, a privileged stage for the myth and cult of Dionysus. This paper traces the intertwined histories of the god of wine and ecstasy and the island that Greek colonists—pioneers of advanced viticulture in the western Mediterranean—already celebrated as a “land of the vine.” Moving from archaic foundations and classical poleis through the Roman period and the era of Norman–Arab sweet wines to the 21st‑century, quality‑driven renaissance of Etna and other Sicilian terroirs, it argues that Sicilian identity has been persistently shaped by the conjunction of Dionysian myth and a remarkably continuous, evolving wine culture.