Avola Rum

Perhaps not everyone knows that rum in Sicily is nothing new, on the contrary: suffice it to say that sugar cane was brought to the island by the Arabs in 800 A.D., and was cultivated there until around 1600, when for climatic reasons it disappeared everywhere except in the feud of Avola. Here, the Marquises Pignatelli Aragona Cortes continued to produce sugar and then, from 1700, also rum, fermenting and distilling the pure cane juice - or cannamela, in dialect.

It was Corrado Bellia, an entrepreneur from Avola, who rediscovered this centuries-old tradition. After finding some historical evidence of the deep connection between Sicily and sugar cane, he decided to realise a dream that had been fermenting in his head for years and went back to distilling, thus making the Vallo di Noto, already famous for its wines and nero d'Avola, also a land of rum.