When it’s summertime in Sicily, it’s time to head to the local market or down to the docks to look over the day’s catch, pick out the night’s dinner, select herbs from the garden and fire up the grill. It’s a pescatarian bonanza – swordfish, tuna, branzino, octopus, squid, sardines, mullet, cuttlefish – so fresh it may still be flopping around on ice. There’s enough meat around to satisfy carnivores, but seafood rules the kitchens in Sicily, as it does on most Mediterranean islands.

There’s no better accompaniment to this abbondanza di mare than Sicily’s white wines. They have been eclipsed by the popularity of Nero d’Avola and the emergence of Etna’s reds, but on a sultry evening in the piazza or at a trattoria with an ocean view they’re what to pour with sarde beccafico or pescespada a la Marsala.