Sicily starred in the second season of HBO’s black-comic series, The White Lotus, in 2022, but its setting in touristy Taormina was more cliché than revelation, and its themes of sexual intrigue and quasi-criminality (drugs and prostitution) reinforced stereotypes of the big island in the Mediterranean rather than revealing its many subtle pleasures.
But a scene in the season’s fifth episode offered a brief immersion into what was otherwise skimmed over. At a wine-tasting lunch at Sciaranouva, a vineyard on the north side of Mount Etna, the show’s privileged characters toasted la dolce vita with wines made by the Planeta family. “Sicilian wine, no one ever told me about,” actress Jennifer Coolidge, who played Tanya, later raved to an interviewer.
The mineral-rich Etna Bianco poured for the cast at that lunch is but one of the 30 wines produced by the Planetas in their six wineries and many vineyards. And wine is only one aspect of the family’s visionary business. Since the 1980s, it has been dedicated to putting “Sicily on the map again,” as Diego Planeta, grandfather of the current generation, put it when he decided to upgrade the wines and olive oils they’d produced over the 17 generations and 330 years since they first acquired land in the commune of Sambuca di Sicilia in the southwestern province of Agrigento.
An earlier Diego Planeta was made a baron by Ferdinand IV of Naples in the late 18th Century, but today’s Planetas are more concerned with viniculture, sustainable farming and environmental and cultural philanthropy than with noble titles—making them model modern aristocrats.
They have shared the fruits of their labors since the 1860s, when Vito Planeta joined other local wine cellars in a growers’ cooperative. In 1985, his son Diego planted his first vineyard, experimenting with non-native grapes and micro-crops; he released the first Planeta bottles a decade later and continued to perfect and diversify the family’s products until his death four years ago. Today, cousins Francesca, Allesio, and Santi Planeta direct 270 employees, including more family members, who produce 2.4 million bottles annually. They also raise bees and cattle, distribute other growers’ wines and best of all, invite others into their world.
Their first hotel, Foresteria Planeta, with 14 rooms surrounded by gardens and vineyards that produce much of what’s served in its restaurant, which spotlights Planeta’s wines, of course. They come from local vineyards as well as others in Vittoria, mid-way to Siracusa, the baroque city of Noto near Sicily’s east coast, Capo Milazzo on the northeast coast, and on the slopes of volcanic Mount Etna, several of which offer winery and vineyard tours, tastings and cooking classes.
The pool at the La Segreta Country House, part of Planeta’s resort.
The Planetas think of their products (which also include olives, olive oil and durham wheat) as a metaphorical tour of Sicily. A more literal tour takes their guests from Foresteria to the just-opened ten-room La Segreta Country House (named for one of their first wines) in next door Menfi to the nearby Lido Fiori, where Insula, their elegant beach club/restaurant, is sheltered in the pines off a pristine, uncrowded blue flag beach, and finally to Palermo, an hour’s drive north, where their eponymous Palazzo has nine apartments and, soon, four suites, in an early 20th century building close to the historic center.
“Our family got into hospitality to show our clients the territory and the culture behind our wines,” says Francesca Planeta. “And in Menfi, there was a need for a high level of hospitality.” In vino, veritas.