Italy minister vows to invest in Sicily's wine tourism

Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini, revealed at Vinitaly that Sicily’s wine tourism will be “increasingly supported in terms of logistics and infrastructure”, claiming that “exporting excellence must be increasingly simple, fast and competitive”.

Speaking at this week’s Vinitaly, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister hinted that significant investment would be made in Sicily’s infrastructure in a bid to improve the island’s wine tourism offer. Referring to what he called a “three-step recipe” Matteo Salvini said the goal was to “connect, make accessible, and build the future”.

To that end, he added that the plan would bring together regions, businesses, and services.

“Over half of Sicilian wine production ends up on international tables: this represents wealth for Sicily and Italy, thanks to American, German, and Japanese buyers [in particular],” Salvini said. “I believe that this Sicily, capable of combining quality, identity, and open markets, will be increasingly supported also in terms of logistics and infrastructure, because exporting excellence must be increasingly simple, fast, and competitive.”

Driving home the importance of investing in Sicilian wine’s reputation abroad, he added: “Wine, like the entire agri-food sector, is an extraordinary ambassador for our country.”

Construction underway

According to Salvini, part of Sicily’s wine sales growth is “due to the €28 billion in construction sites currently underway in Sicily on roads, highways, railways, and dams, which support agriculture, business, transportation, and manufacturing”.

Addressing one hot potato among Sicilan wine producers, he added: “On the water issue, we’ve restarted structures that have been idle for 40 years. There are construction sites underway on the Palermo-Catania-Messina line and on the railway line, and I hope that, as requested by several Messina and Catania producers, there will be further construction sites for other bridges within the year.”

Suspension bridge

The longstanding proposition of a suspension bridge linking Sicily with mainland Italy is very much Salvini’s baby, with the Deputy Prime Minister vowing to succeed where others have failed. Design plans suggest the total span of the bridge would be 3.3 kilometres, with 339-metre-tall towers holding it aloft. At its central point, it would stand 74m above sea level and be 60m wide – enough for three traffic lanes in each direction, a service lane and a double-track railway. It must also be strong enough to survive a 7.1-magnitude earthquake, the same level on the Richter scale that flattened Messina in northern Sicily in 1908 – the deadliest recorded earthquake in European history.

However, according to one nationwide poll conducted in 2018, 53% of Italians oppose the bridge, with 30% in favour and 17% undecided.

Speaking to db in 2024, Antonio Ciccarelli, PR & communication manager for wine group Piccini 1882, which owns the Torre Mora estate in Sicily’s Etna DOC, “the real priority for the Sicilian economy is to have modern roads and railways”.

Ciccarelli argued that “to move goods by train across the island from Catania to Palermo takes seven to eight hours, and to move goods on the road from Catania to Trapani takes five to six hours. I think all Sicilians would prefer to have better infrastructure on the island than a bridge in one of the most seismically active places in the world.”

Recipe for success

Also speaking at this year’s Vinitaly, Luca Sammartino, Italy’s Regional Councillor for Agriculture, declared that the “government’s formula” was to “bring together Sicily’s extraordinary excellence and showcase it”.

Continuing, he said that “the recipe Sicily has implemented will bring great satisfaction… in terms of visitor flows. The investments made by the national and regional governments in our land demonstrate the great attention we are finally seeing after so many years.”

The Italian government has revealed plans to ensure more accessible and frequent air travel to Sicily as well as to complete major infrastructure projects such as the Messina bridge, which Salvini vowed “could represent not only a strategic infrastructure, but a symbol of engineering and architectural value and a tourist attraction.”