The fame of the wines of the Cinque Terre is unmistakable for students of Renaissance literature. In book six of his epic De Africa Petrarch heaped plaudits on the wine of this region:
In The Decameron the abbot of Cluny is cured of a stomach complaint by “a large glass of Vernaccia from Corniglia”. In one of his Novelas ejemplares Cervantes has his travellers arrive “at the splendid and magnificent city of Genoa, and, having visited a church, they entered an inn. Here they became acquainted with the smooth Trebbiano, and they tasted the choice wines of the Cinque Terre, as well as the sweet and gentle wines of Venaccia.”
So what are the fabled wines of the Cinque Terre? There are two. A dry white wine is made from a mixture of Bosco, the workhorse white wine grape of Liguria, and either or both of Albarola, a rather neutral grape, and the much more attractive and interesting Vermentino, which can impart some aromatic life to the wine (though it is not as successful here as in southern France). Then there is the legendary sweet wine called Sciacchetrà, which is made from the same grapes but dried in the sun to achieve concentration and sweetness — though you will be lucky to find any, as fewer than 200 cases are now made in any year.
It is hard today to see any justification for the praise of these wines by Boccaccio, Petrarch and Cervantes. What might account for the discrepancy? It is possible that, in an age when wine-making techniques were still very traditional, and when the chemistry of wine was not at all understood, the peculiar situation of the Cinque Terre — thin soil, steeply-raked vineyards, a protective westerly aspect and moderation from sea-breezes — helped to preserve the wine made there from the obvious faults of “cooking” on the vine and of being fermented at too high a temperature. Even now in Sardinia the Vermentino is sometimes harvested a little early, before it is phenologically ripe, in order to preserve freshness and acidity. For the contemporaries of Boccaccio and Petrarch the wines of the Cinque Terre might indeed have had a genuinely rare lift and precision.
There is a further, more cultural, possibility. Since the tenth century this part of the Ligurian coast had been subject to raids from Saracen pirates, who plundered the villages and took away the women and children. These raids continued throughout the 16th century, until in 1634 the Republic of Genoa established a squadron of corsairs to protect the Cinque Terre. Their emergence from this very westerly site of struggle between Christendom and Islam may have varnished these wines with a faint apocalyptic glow, now however long since departed when this stretch of coastline has dwindled into nothing more than an agreeable holiday destination for the affluent European middle classes.
Hinc solis vineta oculo lustrata benigno
Et Baccho dilecta nimis montemque rubentem
Et juga prospectant Cornelia palmite late
Inclyta mellifluo; quibus haud collesque Falernos
Laudatamque licet Meroen cessisse pudebit:
Tunc seu pigra situ, nulli seu nota poetae
Illa fuit tellus, jacuit sine carmine sacro.
On this side they surveyed the vineyards traversed by the sun’s fruitful gaze and so highly prized by Bacchus, and the red mountain [i.e. Monterosso], and the Cornelian heights [i.e. Corniglia] renowned far and wide for their sweet wine; wines it will be no shame to prefer to those of the Falernian hills and of celebrated Meroes. But then, whether because of its remote situation, or because no poet was acquainted with that district, it lay uncelebrated in verse.
In The Decameron the abbot of Cluny is cured of a stomach complaint by “a large glass of Vernaccia from Corniglia”. In one of his Novelas ejemplares Cervantes has his travellers arrive “at the splendid and magnificent city of Genoa, and, having visited a church, they entered an inn. Here they became acquainted with the smooth Trebbiano, and they tasted the choice wines of the Cinque Terre, as well as the sweet and gentle wines of Venaccia.”
So what are the fabled wines of the Cinque Terre? There are two. A dry white wine is made from a mixture of Bosco, the workhorse white wine grape of Liguria, and either or both of Albarola, a rather neutral grape, and the much more attractive and interesting Vermentino, which can impart some aromatic life to the wine (though it is not as successful here as in southern France). Then there is the legendary sweet wine called Sciacchetrà, which is made from the same grapes but dried in the sun to achieve concentration and sweetness — though you will be lucky to find any, as fewer than 200 cases are now made in any year.
It is hard today to see any justification for the praise of these wines by Boccaccio, Petrarch and Cervantes. What might account for the discrepancy? It is possible that, in an age when wine-making techniques were still very traditional, and when the chemistry of wine was not at all understood, the peculiar situation of the Cinque Terre — thin soil, steeply-raked vineyards, a protective westerly aspect and moderation from sea-breezes — helped to preserve the wine made there from the obvious faults of “cooking” on the vine and of being fermented at too high a temperature. Even now in Sardinia the Vermentino is sometimes harvested a little early, before it is phenologically ripe, in order to preserve freshness and acidity. For the contemporaries of Boccaccio and Petrarch the wines of the Cinque Terre might indeed have had a genuinely rare lift and precision.
There is a further, more cultural, possibility. Since the tenth century this part of the Ligurian coast had been subject to raids from Saracen pirates, who plundered the villages and took away the women and children. These raids continued throughout the 16th century, until in 1634 the Republic of Genoa established a squadron of corsairs to protect the Cinque Terre. Their emergence from this very westerly site of struggle between Christendom and Islam may have varnished these wines with a faint apocalyptic glow, now however long since departed when this stretch of coastline has dwindled into nothing more than an agreeable holiday destination for the affluent European middle classes.
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