Campania

Campania made the most famous wine of the ancient world and then spent most of the twentieth century being ignored. It has three grapes of unarguable quality, volcanic soils that phylloxera never fully conquered, and prices that have still not caught up with any of it.

The Landscape Half the region is hill, a third mountain, and only 15 per cent flat. The Apennine ridge runs north-west to south-east through the Matese and Taburno massifs, opening into the plateaus and basins around Benevento. Along the coast the relief is volcanic — Somma-Vesuvio, the Campi Flegrei — while the Lattari and Massico mountains are sedimentary. Ischia, Capri and Procida lie offshore. The climate divides in two: mild and maritime from the Caserta coast through Naples to Salerno, and distinctly more continental inland, where altitude and mountains take over.

Volcanic and Unstable The defining fact is geological restlessness — eruptions, earthquakes, and the slow rise and fall of bradyseism. Much of the region lies under pyroclastic material thrown out by Phlegraean and Vesuvian eruptions, which is why the soils are so fertile. Irpinia, the inland heart of Campanian fine wine, has the structure of a recently uplifted chain: rocks of wildly different ages in abrupt contact, flysch along the valley slopes, Pliocene sandstone and clay on the valley floors. Vesuvius contributes soils heavy in potassium and leucite, coarse tuff and lapilli. At Tufo, marine sediments lie buried beneath thick pumiceous pyroclastics and cinerite — the ground that gives Greco di Tufo its name and its smoky, sulphurous edge.

Falernum The Etruscans brought vines from the eighth century BC and the Greeks followed with eastern varieties collectively called Amineae. After the Second Punic War, Roman Campania held the densest concentration of vineyards in all of Italy, and its best wine was aged in great terracotta doli. The most celebrated was Falernian, from the Ager Falernus north of the Volturno on the slopes of Monte Massico — the benchmark against which Roman writers measured everything else. The Falerno del Massico DOC still occupies that ground.

The Grapes Aglianico is the great red of southern Italy: late-ripening, tannic, high in acid, capable of forty years and frequently bottled before it is ready. It dominates Irpinia along the Valle del Sabato and north-east of the Calore, and takes a gentler form on the Taburno. Piedirosso — per’ e palummo, dove’s foot, after the red stems of its bunches — is the softer coastal red. The whites are just as good: Fiano, textured and honeyed and long-lived; Greco, firmer and more mineral; and Falanghina, which flourishes in the Campi Flegrei and Sannio on everything from the flysch hills of Benevento to the lava and tuff of extinct Roccamonfina. Coda di Volpe grows on Vesuvius, Biancolella and Forastera on Ischia.

The Critical Take This is the best value in serious Italian wine and has been for twenty years. A top Taurasi costs a fraction of a comparable Barolo and ages as long; Fiano di Avellino and Greco di Tufo are among the few Italian whites that genuinely improve over a decade, and they sell for the price of ordinary Soave. Two things hold the region back. Aglianico is routinely released too young and over-oaked, which makes it seem punishing rather than structured. And the sheer beauty of the coast has pushed land towards tourism, so the heroic terraces of Amalfi and Ischia survive largely on stubbornness. One quiet distinction: in the deep volcanic sands of the Campi Flegrei, Vesuvius and Ischia, phylloxera never established itself, and ungrafted vines on their own roots are still worked today.

At the Table Buffalo mozzarella from the Sele plain, pizza as it was invented, ragù napoletano cooked for most of a day, genovese of onions and beef, anchovies and lemons from the Amalfi coast, and pastiera at Easter. Fiano handles the mozzarella; Aglianico handles the ragù.

Where to Start Fiano di Avellino and Greco di Tufo tasted side by side — they are nothing alike, and the contrast makes both clearer. Then a Taurasi with at least eight years on it, or an Aglianico del Taburno if you want the same grape with less resistance.