Depending on where you buy and drink wine, catarratto will be very familiar or very obscure. There was a time in the 2010s when I’d have put good money on it being the house white in half of Hackney’s restaurants, and if you’ve ever picked up a sub-£15 natural white wine at an independent bottle shop, catarratto will probably have featured. If, however, you buy wine from bigger retailers and have a taste for fruity, sun-soaked whites, chances are you’ve been drinking catarratto without even knowing it.
This is bonkers, given its prevalence. Catarratto is Sicily’s most widely planted white grape, accounting for roughly a third of the island’s vineyards; and, after sangiovese, it’s the second most planted grape in all of Italy. For decades, though, it was either destined for bulk wine, disappearing into tanks of anonymous, juicy table wines, or for use as a component of better-known Sicilian denominations such as fortified marsala or Etna bianco, where it plays a supporting role to other indigenous Sicilian grapes, such as grillo or carricante, respectively. It has about it a bit of a Quincy Jones quality: integral to the success of others before being recognised in its own right. Which it now really is, as modern producers make more complex catarrattos that really express their terroirs, be that volcanic, maritime or the rolling hills around Alcamo in the Sicilian north-west.
While catarratto might not be a wine for every occasion, it is one for any occasion: ripe pear and peach, lemon and almond notes do a delicious dance to which few can object. It remains a favourite on wine lists of places that want a fun, affordable and crowdpleasing white, but it’s also being named and championed in supermarket bottles. The Purato organic catarratto/pinot grigio blend from Ocado in today’s pick might, in decades past, have been an “Italian” or “Sicilian” white, but this is a cheery drop that celebrates its component parts. Meanwhile, Vinca’s Organic White Wine (which I wrote about in my canned wine column a fortnight ago) explicitly mentions “100% catarratto grapes” on its packaging (and is also available in aluminium bottles from Tesco for just £8.50). And the Biddizza unfiltered amber number from Adnam’s in my pick (in a party-friendly litre bottle, too) shows yet another face of this grape. All offer excellent value, and stay true to catarratto’s roots.
It’s the little guys who still get me most excited, though. I say little, but Nino Barraco, a natural winemaker based in the catarratto heartland of Marsala, overlooking the sea, is a titan of Sicilian wine. He makes single-vineyard wines with the indigenous grapes and wild yeasts of western Sicily, and I was recently seduced by his Biancomatte (see my pick), a one-off wine made in 2025, when his new bush catarratto failed to reach full ripeness. It’s light, it’s bright, it’s mineral and it’s wonderful. If you’re a sucker for a limited-edition anything, you won’t regret going in for this one.
Four catarrattos to catch the eye
Fazoli Gino Biddizza Catarratto £17.99 (1 litre) Adnams, 13%. The ultimate alfresco party wine: a peachy and food-versatile orange catarratto.
Biancomatto Barraco 2025 £22.50 Sip Wines, 9.5%. This one-off is the result of a bad year for the winemaker’s young bush catarratto – a beautiful oops.
Purato Organic Catarratto Pinot Grigio £10.75 Ocado, 11%. It might be a blend, but you get bags of round, fruit-forward catarratto here.
Tule Bianco Catarratto 2024 £11.10 The Sourcing Table, 12%. An unfiltered, mineral number from the catarratto heartland of Alcamo: a white shirt of a wine that goes with everything.
