Colline Savonesi IGT

The hills behind Savona, on the Ligurian Riviera di Ponente. It is a geographical indication rather than a denomination, and it covers a stretch of coast whose viticulture the file credits to sailors.

The Terroir The registered file reads as a survey. The substrates are turbidites of sandstone, calcareous-marly and clayey composition. Vineyard altitude runs from sea level to 800 metres. Mean temperature is about 13°C; rainfall peaks in April at around 210 mm and collapses to an average of 11 mm in July. Eleven millimetres is effectively nothing — the driest month in any file in this corpus — and it explains why these vineyards are small, terraced, and planted to varieties that tolerate drought.

Sailors and Walls The file’s account of how the vine arrived is the best part. Its introduction and spread are attributed to sailors and traders who, from the early Middle Ages, introduced cultivars from other territories, then locally selected and adapted them, improving cultivation and teaching the use of terracing with dry-stone walls. That is a precise and plausible description of how a maritime republic built an agriculture: the grapes came in as cargo and the engineering came with them.

Grape Varieties Lumassina is the local speciality — a sharp, low-alcohol white named, according to the usual explanation, for the snails it was drunk with. Vermentino, Pigato, Albarola and Bianchetta follow among the whites; the reds include Rossese, Dolcetto, Sangiovese and Barbera, with Granaccia — Grenache under its Savonese name — the one worth seeking out.

The Critical Take The Savonese is the least regarded stretch of the Ligurian coast for wine and has the most interesting minor grapes on it. Lumassina, bottled dry and sometimes lightly frizzante, is one of the sharpest, most refreshing whites in Italy and costs almost nothing; Granaccia from the hills above Quiliano is a genuine rarity. Almost all of it is drunk locally, in quantities that would not register anywhere. Nobody should travel for it, and anyone already there should drink nothing else.

Eleven Millimetres The July rainfall figure deserves its own note. Ligurian viticulture is usually described in terms of slope and labour, and the drought is the harder constraint: a vine on a terrace with half a metre of soil, in a month with no rain and full Mediterranean sun, survives by rooting into fractured rock. That is why the wines are saline, and why the yields are what they are.

At the Table The obvious answer: lumache, then anchovies, farinata, focaccia di Recco, and fried fish. Serve the whites at 9–11°C.

Benchmark Producers Punta Crena at Varigotti, the reference for these grapes, and Vio.