A glass of Nero d'Avola, the voice of Nass El Ghiwane, and an unexpected journey between Sicily and Morocco
There are evenings when we choose a bottle, and there are evenings when the bottle chooses us. This was one of those evenings.
A bottle of Nero d'Avola found its way onto my table deep ruby in colour, almost black at its heart, carrying within it the warmth of Sicily's sun and the melancholy of its history. It is a wine born from an island where volcanoes shape the landscape, where Greek temples overlook the sea, and where every generation has inherited stories of conquest, exile, faith and resilience. From the very first sip, I knew I was travelling not across geography, but across memory.
As the wine slowly opened in my glass, Nass El Ghiwane began to play in the background. Their voices earthy, raw and hypnotic have always possessed something timeless, as though they emerged from the depths of an older Mediterranean, one that existed long before borders and passports. The coincidence felt strangely inevitable.
Martin Scorsese, himself the son of Sicilian immigrants, once called Nass El Ghiwane "the Rolling Stones of Africa." Their haunting song "Ya Sah" even found its place in The Last Temptation of Christ, quietly weaving together two worlds that, at first glance, appear distant yet somehow recognise one another.
Listening to that music while drinking a Sicilian wine, I realised that both were speaking the same language not Italian, not Arabic, but the language of the Mediterranean itself.
Nero d'Avola expresses itself with remarkable confidence. Dark cherries, ripe blackberries, wild herbs, liquorice and warm spices unfold layer after layer, while its generous texture leaves behind a long, sunlit finish. It is not an exuberant wine. Its power lies in restraint, in depth and in silence. Like certain people, it never raises its voice because it has nothing to prove.
With every glass, images of Sicily returned to me: the narrow streets of Palermo, the golden light falling across the Baroque façades of Syracuse, the family trattorias where recipes are guarded with almost religious devotion, and villages where tradition weighs as heavily as history itself. Inevitably, I found myself thinking of the Sicily imagined by Scorsese a place where loyalty, family and destiny remain forever intertwined.
Then, without warning, another city appeared before me: Essaouira, the old Mogador. A city shaped not by volcanoes but by Atlantic winds, where music drifts through whitewashed streets as naturally as sea air. It is the birthplace of Abderrahmane Paco, one of the unforgettable voices of Nass El Ghiwane.
At first glance, Sicily and Essaouira have little in common. One faces the Tyrrhenian Sea; the other opens onto the Atlantic Ocean. Yet both have stood for centuries at the crossroads of civilizations. Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Jews, Berbers and Europeans have all left traces upon their stones. They are places where cultures do not erase one another they accumulate, layer upon layer, patiently shaped by time.
Perhaps that is why the wine suddenly ceased to be merely Sicilian. It became Mediterranean. Its aromas no longer belonged solely to vineyards; they belonged to ports, to merchants, to fishermen, to pilgrims, to musicians, and to all those anonymous travellers who have crossed these waters carrying stories instead of luggage.
Between one sip and the next, I found myself journeying from Palermo to Mogador, from Scorsese to Paco, from the quiet rhythm of a Catholic rosary to the hypnotic pulse of the Gnawa guembri. The wine became conversation, the music became landscape, and memory became geography.
At that moment I understood something beautifully simple: the greatest journeys are not measured in kilometres but in the unexpected connections that suddenly reveal themselves. A melody can uncork a forgotten memory. A wine can reopen an entire civilisation. A single evening can shorten the distance between continents.
As I finished my glass, I realised that I had travelled across the Mediterranean without leaving my chair. Sometimes, that is all it takes: a bottle of Sicilian wine, a Moroccan song, and the willingness to listen to what both have been trying to tell us for centuries.
Wine, Places & Memories