Sicily's Western tip balances a few sightseeing gems with long stretches of stark reality

I have been to a lot of famous wine regions, and they all tend to look the same. Verdant hills with stripes of vines are dotted with prosperous-looking farmhouses or estates while charming villages ... usually packed with upscale boutique hotels, independent restaurants, art galleries and cute shops ... are tucked into the valleys. 

The west of Sicily breaks that mould. Though it produces more than 50% of Sicily's wine, it is a stark and empty place. It is beautiful but in a haunting way: vast, lonely and melancholic. That's strange, given that the white wines that come from here ... Grillo, Cataratto, Inzolia, golden Marsala ... are glasses of cheerful sunshine.

Maybe I should blame my SatNav for my first impressions. The day I explored most widely it took me on the direct but little-travelled route through back country menaced by inky clouds and violent downpours. Even in benign conditions, however, you would have noticed the emptiness. I went for almost 10 miles without seeing another car, a human being in the fields or an inhabited building; just acres of vines punctuated by abandoned farm houses. The only thing that moved besides me and the rain was a herd of goats grazing its way through one of the vineyards.

The people clearly all live in the towns, not the countryside, and the towns are uninspiring. The local road between Mazara del Vallo and Marsala mixes light industry with big agricultural businesses, a lot of roadside rubbish and some unlovely small towns that seemed entirely the product of a troubled 20th century.

Marsala, the furthest west and north I went on this part of the trip, was equally grim despite its storied past. World War II deserves much of the blame. This base of great cultures since the Carthaginians, home of legendary wine, starting point of Garibaldi's revolution, was "wiped off the map" by American bombing in 1943, according to a New York Times headline of the time. The rebuilding was rushed, utilitarian, and not really worth a wander for today's tourists. 

Curiously, though the town is right on the coast, it doesn't have much of a seafront. A large chunk of land is taken up by the ruins of Carthaginian Lilybaeum, exciting in concept but the reality is untended scrubland you wouldn't realise was a historic site unless someone told you. The only thing of historic interest along the waterfront is a handful of old Marsala warehouses and some traditional salt production flats. These are why you want to come to town.

As drinking habits and export markets have changed, the Marsala wine industry has shrunk from many production houses to just a few, and of those Florio is the biggest name with the grandest history and the broadest variety of tasting experiences. If you've watched The Lions of Sicily on Disney Plus then it also has the benefit of its association with that series' protagonist. The historic Vincenzo Florio, whom photos suggest was a good deal less sexy than his TV counterpart, bought up multiple small wineries and combined them into what became the dominant name in the industry. It's still the most impressive and best-maintained building along Marsala's seafront. 

But before I take you inside, let's clarify what I mean by Marsala. There's a lot of wine produced in the province of Marsala, much of it "normal" whites, rosés, and some reds that fit into the table wine category. But Marsala as a Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC), is only a fortified wine similar to Port. Like its Portuguese cousin, Marsala was created by British entrepreneurs who saw the potential for shipping and selling it back home. Two centuries ago, tastes leaned towards sweeter wine, wines didn't travel well and Britain didn't produce any of its own. If you add alcohol to a wine you stop its natural fermentation process while stabilising it for travel. It was perfect for exporting to Britain, and many Brits moved to the continent to make wines to send back home. While the Port-producing British families and their influences are there to this day (as evidenced by the Porto Cricket Club), Sicily's Inghams and Whitakers eventually sold their operations to Florio, leaving nothing British but their names on a few heritage sites.

Port remains a staple on the British dining table, particularly at the end of a celebratory meal. Marsala, however, enjoyed its peak in Continental Europe between the wars as a high-class aperitif before its reputation plummeted and it almost disappeared from the market. 

We can blame WWII again. With production facilities flattened and both the population and the fields devastated by war, winemakers needed products that would inject some cash fast. Enter the cooking Marsala your grandmother probably had in her pantry. This "Marsala Speciale" was artificially sweetened to a level far beyond the original and promoted along with recipes like veal marsala and tiramisu. While that tactic drove a surge in profits and saw Marsala-driven recipes become all the rage in the '50s and '60s, the food trend peaked, passed on, and the market started to shrink. In its wake, few people remembered ... much less drank ... the original styles.

Proper Marsala, as awarded the DOC and sampled at Florio, is a wine of delicacy and variety. Much of it isn't sweet, having a flavour profile closer to sherry, and most of it is white. Even the red was a very light shade. Though it was called "ruby" to differentiate it from the golden and amber we tried, it's nowhere near as dark or sweet as a Ruby Port; it's much closer to a 20-year-old tawny. 

In addition to the tasting, the Florio tour welcomes you through the gates into their "baglio", a courtyard complex complete with a central garden, houses, offices, production facilities, the maturing warehouses and a beautifully styled, very upscale shop. Over the main gate is a striking stone carving of a lion drinking at a pond, the original logo that also sparked the description of the family as "the lions of Sicily." 

The facility is in great shape and looks very historic now, but the reality is that it was all re-built after the war. And though its long, narrow, maturing warehouses look enormous, they are just four of the 13 original. That post-war rebuilding wasn't done by the Florio family, however, as they'd squandered their enormous fortune by the '30s. The winery stayed in Italian hands, however, going first to the Cinzano people before joining the Saronno group, of Amaretto fame. Italians and aperitivi go hand in hand. 

Florio offers a variety of tasting experiences but only a few in English. It's best to pre-book on their website rather than walking in, though anyone could pop in to the store.

Another staple of the Italian table is produced about 20 minutes north along that unremarkable coastline: sea salt. There's a string of salt marshes along the shore between Marsala and Trapani where salt is still produced as it would have been for thousands of years. Let sea water into shallow pools where the water can evaporate, keep turning the salt as the moisture goes, end eventually you end up with piles of glistening white crystals. Move them to bigger mounds for packaging, open the sluice gates and start over. There is almost no reason to continue this process: the salt you'd get from removing the water with machines would taste pretty much the same. Experts say that the shape of the crystals is unique when you do it the old way, and that can give you a nicer crunch when you put it on food. 

The real reason for keeping the old ways going is that it's become a tourist attraction.

At Saline Gonna it's easy to see why. I can't think of another production process that's so attractive. The salt pools have a milky, reflective sheen that mirrors the world in a magical way. There are endless variations of blue, green and white here between water, clouds, the land behind you and an island in the bay. Piles of freshly-made salt glisten like diamonds. 

As pretty as it all is, you'll be hard-pressed to spend more than half an hour here, and that includes browsing through the shop of salt-based products. You could linger a bit longer with an escorted tour, but most of those are in Italian; check the website and pre-book in English if you're interested. The real point of this place is dining with a view. I was here mid-afternoon, when the restaurant ... seafood based and with one side open to the sea ... was quiet. Two enormous terraces of outdoor tables were roped off, waiting for the evening clientele. The sun sets directly off the coast from here, and it's supposedly at its most beautiful at sunset.

At the other end of the SS115, that hard-working stretch of road that showcases the Sicily of normal people rather than tourists, lies Mazara del Vallo. The numerous descriptions I'd read of it as one of Sicily's largest fishing ports, and consequently as a flashpoint for illegal immigration, didn't lead me to expect much. To my surprise, however, Mazara was a good deal more picturesque than Marsala, with a seaside promenade full of attractive restaurants with views, a surprisingly opulent main church, a lovely central piazza that had retained its Baroque splendour, and one very small but exceptional museum.

In 1998 a boat of local fishermen briefly believed they'd dredged up a body in their nets before realising that they'd discovered an ancient bronze statue. There's still a great deal of debate over whether it's an original by Praxiteles, the greatest sculptor of the Greek world, a later Greek copy, or an even later Roman one. Whatever the truth, it's astonishingly beautiful, and slept on the sea bed for about 2,000 years. 

It's an exquisite young man, the muscles in his perfect body clearly delineated as he throws his head back in an ecstatic dance. Unlike so many other Greek bronzes, this one has retained its alabaster eyes. Those, the lifelike swing of his hair and the incredible sense of motion captured by the sculptor make him bizarrely lifelike. If Ancient Greece was full of statues like this, the myth of Pygmalion willing one to life becomes perfectly believable.

This one-room museum in the nave of a small, deconsecrated church is called, quite logically, the Museum of the Dancing Satyr. Also on show is a variety of pottery and ancient decorative items showing the same figure in the same pose. This explains how art historians knew he was a dancing satyr. The statue might have disappeared, but its legend lived on in ancient homeware. Today's satyr dances without arms or one leg. Fishermen continued to dredge the area but haven't found the rest of him. The museum holds some other items brought up in the local area, however, including one intriguing foot and lower leg of a bronze elephant. It's life-sized, and just as realistic as the satyr. It must have been incredible.

There's also an area where you can watch a film that explains, with English subtitles, how the fishermen found the satyr and the high-tech process scientists and restorers used to clean him up and get him ready for display. 

Despite treasures like the Dancing Satyr, Western Sicily from Mazara to Marsala isn't really a tourist area. I suspect we would have found more densely-packed, traditionally beautiful attractions had we driven another hour up to Trapani and Erice. But this first part of the holiday was also about rest, and we'd booked ourselves into such a glorious hotel we didn't want to leave. 

The Almar Giardino di Costanza is a destination hotel with a fabulous spa. (See my introductory entry for more.) You don't need more than a night or two on this coast if you're only interested in sightseeing. But if you're looking for a balance between the sights and high quality R&R, book into the Almar and plan on the sites above, plus Selinunte. Add Trapani and Erice and you could have a very happy week entirely off the beaten track, while also understanding a bit more about modern Sicily beyond the tourist hotspots.