Bivongi DOC

Calabria’s youngest denomination, created in June 1996, on the eastern slope of the Serre between the Stilaro valley and the Ionian coast. Ten communes share it — Bivongi, Camini, Caulonia, Monasterace, Pazzano, Placanica, Riace, Stignano and Stilo in the province of Reggio Calabria, with Guardavalle in Catanzaro.

The History The registered file reaches a long way back: vine growing and winemaking here have remote origins, and these territories were the cradle of the city of Kaulonia in 700 BC. Kaulonia was a Greek colony of Achaean foundation on the Ionian shore, destroyed by Dionysius of Syracuse and never fully rebuilt; its ruins sit at Monasterace Marina, inside the denomination.

The Terroir The zone runs from sea level up the flank of the Serre, the granite spine that separates the Ionian from the Tyrrhenian in southern Calabria. Vineyards sit on decomposed granite and schist with sandy, freely draining soils, cooled at night by air coming off the mountains and exposed by day to a hard Ionian sun. It is a short, steep transect — you can be at 600 metres within a few kilometres of the beach.

Grape Varieties The reds and rosés, which are most of the production, come from Gaglioppo, Greco Nero, Nocera and Nero d’Avola; the whites from Greco Bianco, Malvasia, Ansonica and the local Guardavalle. The file describes the red as red tending to garnet with age, vinous and delicate, dry and harmonious, and the riserva at a minimum 12.5 per cent with 20 g/l of dry extract.

The Critical Take The file makes a claim about style that is worth taking seriously: Bivongi is appreciated, it says, for the round taste created by a balanced presence of glycerine and by a contained alcohol level. That is an accurate self-description and an unusual one for the deep south — these are medium-weight, savoury, drinkable reds rather than the 15-degree monsters the region is often reduced to. Some of the best are aged in chestnut rather than oak, which is the old Calabrian practice and gives a drier, more resinous grip.

Stilo and Riace Two things in this small zone are known worldwide and neither is the wine. La Cattolica di Stilo is a tenth-century Byzantine church on the hillside above the village, five small domes on a square plan, and the finest surviving monument of Greek Calabria. And it was off Riace, in 1972, that a diver found the two fifth-century BC bronze warriors now in the museum at Reggio.

At the Table Calabrian cooking of the Ionian side: swordfish, stocco, pork and chilli, fileja with goat, and pecorino del Poro. Serve the red at 15–16°C.

Benchmark Producers Cantina Lavorata, whose Bivongi Rosso Riserva is aged two years in chestnut casks and is the reference bottle for the denomination.