Pantelleria Island, off the coast of Sicily

Pantelleria has a way of pulling very different lives into the same orbit. This wind-brushed crescent of volcanic rock in the Mediterranean sits closer to Tunisia than to Sicily, and its landscape of black stone terraces, dammusi homes, and low, bowl-trained vines shapes everything from architecture to what ends up on the plate. In this post I’m weaving together two lives that touched Pantelleria—Giorgio Armani and Ugo Ponzi—and the island’s essential foods and wines that speak its language of restraint and character.