Capri DOC

Four thousand square metres of vineyard, more or less, on one of the most visited islands in the world. Capri is the smallest serious denomination in Italy, and its registered file is unusually honest about why.

The Terroir The file places the island in the Gulf of Naples, between the Sorrento-Amalfi peninsula, Capo Miseno and the islands of Procida and Ischia. It then notes something no other file in the register bothers with: two urban realities coexist on the island, different as much by natural geographic separation as by tradition and ethnic origin — Capri and Anacapri. Geologically Capri is limestone, not volcanic, which sets it apart from Ischia and the Campi Flegrei across the water; the vineyards are terraces cut into that rock, mostly on the north-east flank of Monte Solaro, at around a hundred metres above the sea.

The Candid Paragraph The file says it plainly. From the second half of the nineteenth century Capri began to acquire the touristic importance it has held for decades, and this brought a certainly minor role for agriculture and in particular for the vine — but the continuous influx of visitors is precisely what brought the island’s wine to be known and appreciated. Tourism destroyed the vineyard and created the market. Both halves are true, and it is rare for a legal document to admit either.

Grape Varieties The white is Falanghina and Greco together at a minimum of 80 per cent, with Falanghina at least half of that, and up to 20 per cent Biancolella, the Ischian white. The red is at least 80 per cent Piedirosso — per’ e palummo, the dove’s foot — at a minimum 11.5 per cent alcohol with a dry, saline finish.

The Critical Take Almost every bottle sold on Capri as Capri wine is not Capri DOC; the quantities do not remotely exist. Genuine bottlings come from a very small number of growers, and they are worth seeking out for reasons beyond curiosity — limestone terraces, sea air and fifty-year-old vines give a white with real salinity and cut, quite different from the volcanic whites of Ischia and the mainland. The red is lighter and more herbal than Campanian Piedirosso usually is. Expect to pay a Capri price for it.

The Phoenician Steps The island’s most serious grower takes its name from the Scala Fenicia, the stone staircase of Greek-Phoenician origin that was the only link between Capri and Anacapri before the road was cut. Its cellar has been in use since 1818, was an oil mill before that, and is built inside a Roman cistern that once stored rainwater for the villas above.

At the Table Caprese cooking: the salad that bears the island’s name, ravioli capresi, grilled fish, totani e patate, and lemon everything. White at 10–12°C, red at 15–16°C.

Benchmark Producers Scala Fenicia, one of very few estates producing wine entirely on the island.