Harry's long tail: Sicily

In the first of a series looking at Italian producers’ recovery from Cyclone Harry, we turn to the Mediterranean island on the front line of the storm’s fury.

Cyclone Harry crossed Sicily between 19 and 23 January 2026. A ‘medicane’ – a Mediterranean storm with hurricane characteristics – it pummelled coastal areas with gusts above 120 km/h and drove waves of more than ten metres onto the Ionian coast. The region’s first census put infrastructure damage at €741 million, with agricultural losses counted separately. Although Sicily’s vines were dormant at this time of year, with no crop to lose, the island’s wine producers were far from immune from its effects.

The direct agricultural damage fell firmly on the island’s famous citrus growers. In the district between Catania and Syracuse, around 25 per cent of the citrus-growing land is certified for Arancia Rossa di Sicilia IGP – some of the finest blood oranges in the world. Here, somewhere between 35 and 45 per cent of production was damaged, and the consorzio subsequently counted more than 500 growers in difficulty across three provinces. The fruit that survived needed up to four passes through the sorting machines before it could be graded, doubling the cost of a harvest many growers had to bring forward from March.

But the chaos wasn’t limited to the coast. Inland, it was borne along rivers including the Dittaino, which broke its banks, submerging newly sown durum wheat and artichoke fields across the Piana di Catania, destroying the harvest. Around Ragusa, greenhouse coverings were torn away by the ravaging winds, again taking production to zero. 

Despite having nothing in the fields except bare vines, Sicily’s winemakers were not immune. The Ionian coast, from Messina down to Syracuse, is the island’s restaurant and hotel corridor and the road most visitors take to reach Etna. Harry hit this region hardest, flooding restaurants, destroying wine shops’ equipment and stock, and seriously damaging many agriturismi. Two months on, many had not reopened. At Letojanni, the iconic restaurant Da Nino – on the beach since the 1950s – took more than €200,000 of damage to its external structure alone, and was still excavating a cellar reckoned among the most important in the south.

The wider economic impact of this damage is not peripheral; research by Nomisma Wine Monitor found wine tourism is now worth roughly as much to Sicilian wineries as export, accounting for more than a tenth of turnover. A wrecked coastal hospitality industry is very much a wine problem.