The lands dedicated to viticulture in Liguria are almost exclusively hillies and mountainouses. The climate seems to be highly influenced by two fundamental natural dominant elements (sea and mountains), the wheather is warm and windy on the coast, while is fresh and with goods temperature range in the internal valley and in the high ground. The light and the extraordinary exposition are the constant that distinguish the better regionals wine producing areas, wines consequently are strongly characterized with marine types, white and red; wines that have a mediterraneean nature in which stand out the elegant sapidity and the optimal balance of taste.
Noble is the adjective who better describe these wines, which are never ordinary, pleasantly sober, delicious partner of a traditional cuisine rich of aromatic qualities and personality, made up with simple and cheap ingredients, but definetely rich of flavour. In this context is notably that the cocept of extreme and precise wineculture finds its sublimation; bristly and steep lands that need the constant presence of man who is the keeper of millenial resources like dry stone wall that from Dolceacqua to Cinque Terre, passing through Pornassio all the wey to “Colli di Luni” characterise the profile of the many terracings that model the contour of the dizzying ligurian hills.
The man is the one who joins, with his work that is extremly manual, he is the one that erect himself as a hero and a artisan, a true artist who makes the resource of most noble work in the world: the farmer ( the one who contains nature), the man who helps to keep standing a land of a rare beauty and fragility. Sometimes he is forced (for example in the case of the Cinque Terre), to work with small strips of land ripped of from the mountain, literally hanging between sky and sea, with the possibility to reach those lands only by feet, travelling curvy mule tracks built with overlapping rocks and a little ground. A huge work that finds similar situations in a very few other areas, such as the extreme Valle d’Aosta, Valtellina, and some portions of Valpolicella, Costiera Amalfitana, the Etna’s slopes and very less more. To compensate for this labour there is the pleasure of working in beyond words scenografic contexts, like the slopes of mountains that stand above Dolceacqua, Soldano and San Biagio della Cima in the extreme west of Liguria, or the roughness and picturesque of Monte di Portofino or Pornassio in the finterland of Imperia, combined to the satisfaction of producing particularly traditional wines and famous in those dwellings.
In the west of Liguria we could find the mythical Pigato wines with a noble profile which are embellished through time, perfumed with smelling herbs, luscious peach and wooded resins, in the mouth those infredients give the best of themselves with extraordinary extensions of biting flavor. The great Pigato, often, in its evolution encroaches into the minerality of hydrocarbons to become unforgettable. By changing coast we return again pleasly on the extraordinary context of the Cinque Terre. The territory of competence provides a small part of the city of La Spezia and practically the entire surface of Riomaggiore, Vernazza and Monterosso. It is a portion of the territory on the Ligurian Coast in the province of La Spezia particularly steep with steepy slopes which makes precipitate the hill from 600 mt into the sea level in just a few meters, with breathtaking scenarios and climatic conditions Unique in the world. The sea, the sun and the stones of which the Land is full ruled the roost.
The wines that follow bring their sensory profile by local elements, which are very characteristic, and come from very special wine varieties (Bosco, Vermentino and Albarola) that give unmistakable characters and are guided by clear flavor and biting salinity. Marini with iodinated perfumes, all the wines that come from the strip adjacent to the sea, resemble the salty air, the rocks, the sun and the fragrant vegetation that grows wild around. Petrified and straight are the average high-end wines, wines of a great gustatory satisfaction, shy and little immediate, are unmistakable sons of a proud strip of Liguria, which is not usually granted, even if is full of overflowing generosity. The Sciacchetrà is the pride of the whole region, a sweet wine of an extraordinary expressiveness, enveloping and never cloying, that finds balance in a juicy sweetness that blends wonderfully in a salt and mineral vein with a slight tannic background, a traditional wine , the essence of a fierce and proud people, the ostentation of that wealth that was not there, of effort and happiness. A solar wine, symbol of a monumental area, consumed during religious holidays and important anniversaries or used as a form of good-natured corruption. The Cinque Terre Sciacchetrà also provides the type “Riserva” that could be placed on the market only from 1 November of the third year after the harvest. Last but not least, the Prince of Ligurian wines: Vermentino a wine that consistently defines the beautiful Ligurian coast, but that could be found on the bright and sunny hills of the Colli di Luni, the environment that best suits this special type of wine. This an enveloping wine, warm and well-balanced, pleasant with fruity nuances of ripe apple and medicinal herbs, often close the sip with a long end of sapidity and a pleasant flavor of almonds. Vermentino (the grape variety that can feel the sea) is, in a region where is not so easy to work with the land, the banner of the qualitative change of a generation of young eagers producers who try to retrace the tracks, heavy and deep, left on the ground by their ancestors. Finally we do not want to forget the generous character of Granaccia, elegance and pure freshness of Bianchetta, Albarola and Lumassina, in addition to the fragrant juiciness of Ciliegiolo and many other wines that identify the region of the overhanging wineyards.