Colline di Levanto DOC

Four communes on the Ligurian coast immediately north of the Cinque Terre — Levanto, Bonassola, Framura and Deiva Marina — making the same wines on the same terraces without the famous name. The DOC dates from 1995.

The Terroir The registered file reads like a soil survey and the numbers are worth having. The vineyard soils show mainly coarse-loam or coarse texture, well drained and therefore very permeable. Altitude runs from sea level to 600 metres, with the prevailing band between 100 and 200 metres. Mean temperature is about 15°C; rainfall peaks in November at around 150 mm and falls to 26 mm in July. Permeable soil and a rainless July on a slope above the sea is a hard combination, and it is why these vineyards are small, terraced and hand-worked.

The History The file dates the first certain evidence of viticulture at Levanto and in the neighbouring Cinque Terre to the sixth and fifth centuries BC — the period when Greek traders were working this coast. That is early even by Italian standards, and it reflects the fact that this shore was reachable by sea long before it was reachable by land.

Grape Varieties Vermentino, Albarola and Bosco for the whites — the Cinque Terre trio, in the same proportions and on the same rock. The reds are Sangiovese and Ciliegiolo. A novello is also registered.

The Critical Take Colline di Levanto is the Cinque Terre without the coach parties, and the wine is frequently as good. The whites are pale, saline and low in alcohol, built entirely for the seafood below them, and they do not age — the file’s own consortium says as much. The reds are a genuine surprise: Ciliegiolo grown on schist terraces above the sea is light, sharply red-fruited and much better than the grape’s reputation as a Sangiovese blender suggests. Everything is made in tiny quantity by growers whose main challenge is the wall, not the wine.

The Terraces This coast is dry-stone walling on a scale that is hard to take in — thousands of kilometres of it along the Ligurian Riviera, built and rebuilt over centuries to hold a metre of soil on a cliff. Maintaining a hectare here takes several times the labour of a hectare on flat ground, which is the entire economics of Ligurian wine and the reason so little of it exists.

At the Table Ligurian coastal cooking: anchovies from Monterosso, trofie al pesto, stuffed mussels, focaccia, and fried fish. Whites at 9–11°C, the Ciliegiolo at 14–15°C.

Benchmark Producers Cà du Ferrà at Bonassola and La Cantina Levantese.