Campi Flegrei DOC

The “Burning Fields” west of Naples. This is volcanic viticulture on the edge of a super-volcano. The stars are Falanghina (the Flegrea biotype, distinct from the Beneventana) and Piedirosso (Per’e Palummo).

The Terroir The soils are loose volcanic sand and ash. Crucially, phylloxera cannot survive here, meaning many vines are ungrafted (on their own roots), some over a century old. This gives the wines a purity and sapidity that is unique in Italy.

The Critical Take The Falanghina here is lighter and more floral than inland versions, with a distinct sulfur/saline note. The Piedirosso is the ultimate “pizza wine”—fresh, smoky, and vibrant.

Inside an Active Caldera The Campi Flegrei is not a volcano in the ordinary sense but a collapsed caldera some twelve kilometres across, still very much alive. Its ground breathes: bradyseism, the slow rise and fall of the land, has lifted and dropped Pozzuoli by metres within recorded history, and the marble columns of the Roman market there carry a band of holes bored by marine molluscs several metres above the present sea. The last eruption threw up Monte Nuovo in a week in 1538. Vines are farmed on the flanks of that system, and the ash they sit in is geologically new.

Vines on Their Own Roots The other consequence of the ash is what it keeps out. Phylloxera cannot move through loose volcanic sand, so a large part of this vineyard was never destroyed and never grafted, and some of the piedirosso here is over a hundred years old on its own roots. Growers train it on the tall pergola frames that let a person work beneath the canopy on ground too crumbly to hold anything heavier.

Dove’s Foot Piedirosso earns its dialect name, per’ e palummo, from the bunch: three red stems splayed at the base like the foot of a pigeon. It is a difficult grape, thin-skinned, late, and prone to rot in a wet autumn, which is why it is so often blended away and why the varietal bottlings from this zone are worth the search.

At the Table This is Neapolitan wine and it belongs with Neapolitan food. Piedirosso is the classic bottle for a pizza from a wood oven, served cool at 14–15°C, and it handles tomato and anchovy in a way heavier reds do not. The Falanghina goes with fried seafood, spaghetti alle vongole, mozzarella di bufala and the bitter friarielli greens that follow sausage. Serve it at 10–12°C and drink it young.

Benchmark Producers Contrada Salandra, Agnanum (Raffaele Moccia), Grotta del Sole.