Falerno del Massico DOC

The modern descendant of Falernum, the most celebrated wine of the Roman world. The zone lies on the slopes of Monte Massico in northern Campania, between the Garigliano and the Volturno, and it is the only Italian denomination that can claim direct continuity with a wine the ancients ranked first.

The History The registered file traces it further back than Rome. Viticulture in the Ager Falernus has very ancient origins going back to the Greek-Mycenaean colonisers, who gave the first impulse; it was taken up again by the Etruscans and further developed in the Roman period. Still visible inside the delimited zone, the file says, are the archaeological remains of production villae rusticae, and the kilns where the amphorae were made — the vessels that carried the wine from the nearby ports of Sinuessa and Gianola to the furthest edges of the Empire.

What Falernian Was Ancient Falernian was a white wine, aged for a decade or more until it turned amber, and strong enough that Pliny reports it was the only wine that would catch light. The Opimian vintage of 121 BC was still being poured, at ruinous prices, more than a century later. Whether anything in the modern bottle resembles it is unknowable and beside the point — what survives is the place, and the fact that the Romans identified this hillside rather than another.

Grape Varieties Falanghina makes the white, which the file describes as straw with green reflections, vinous and pleasant on the nose, dry and saline on the palate. The red is Aglianico with Piedirosso, and there is a separate Primitivo bottling from the commune of Mondragone — an outpost of the grape a long way from Puglia.

The Critical Take A wine with this much history invites bad faith, and the zone has had its share of bottles sold on the name alone. Judged blind, the Aglianico here is genuinely good — volcanic and marine soils on a limestone massif, giving a firmer, more mineral style than the Taurasi hills inland — and the Falanghina is among the best made anywhere, saline and taut. The Primitivo is the curiosity: older-vine, lower-alcohol, and nothing like Manduria.

Monte Massico The massif is limestone with volcanic material laid over it from the Roccamonfina volcano to the north, and it drops almost to the sea. That combination — calcareous bones, volcanic topsoil, maritime air — is uncommon, and it is the honest reason the wines are good, independent of anything Pliny wrote.

At the Table Campanian cooking: buffalo mozzarella and the Falanghina, then genovese, lamb, and aged caciocavallo with the Aglianico. Whites at 10–12°C, reds at 16–18°C.

Benchmark Producers Villa Matilde, which revived the denomination in the 1960s, Michele Moio for the Primitivo, and Masseria Felicia.