Grottino di Roccanova DOC

A three-commune denomination in the Agri valley of Basilicata — Roccanova, Sant’Arcangelo and Castronuovo di Sant’Andrea — recognised as a DOC in 2009. It is named not for a place or a grape but for a building method: the grottini, cellars cut into rock.

The Grotte Around 350 cave cellars are dug into the sandstone bluffs on the edge of Roccanova — the tempe arenarie — and some of them date to the 1700s. They are tunnels driven horizontally into the cliff, and they hold constant temperature and humidity through a Lucanian summer without any equipment at all. Every family had one. The denomination is, unusually, built around a cellar tradition rather than a vineyard one, and the wines are still aged this way.

The Terroir The registered file describes a hill area of middle Pleistocene age and fluvio-lacustrine origin, worked by two watercourses — the river Agri and the Serrapotamo torrent. It gives the altitudes precisely: an average of about 400 metres, with the lowest ground at Sant’Arcangelo at 280 metres on the Agri valley floor, and the highest at Serra Corneta above Castronuovo di Sant’Andrea at 901 metres. That is a 600-metre spread inside three communes, and it is the whole explanation for why the wine keeps its freshness this far south.

Grape Varieties Sangiovese and Montepulciano form the base, with Malvasia Nera and Cabernet Sauvignon permitted alongside. The wine is ruby, intense and persistent on the nose, dry and characteristic on the palate, at a minimum 12 per cent alcohol with 22 g/l of dry extract. A riserva is also made.

The Critical Take Grottino di Roccanova and Terre dell’Alta Val d’Agri sit in the same valley and answer the same question in opposite ways — one with Sangiovese, Montepulciano and Malvasia Nera, the other with Merlot and Cabernet. The comparison is the most interesting thing in Basilicata outside the Vulture, and Grottino has the better argument: the wines taste of somewhere. They are rustic, no question, with dusty tannin and a bitter-herb finish, and they are made in tiny quantity by a handful of families.

The Other Basilicata Everything the region is known for comes from Monte Vulture in the north-west. The Agri valley is the counter-case — Apennine rather than volcanic, high, enclosed, and holding two DOCs almost nobody has heard of. It is worth knowing that Basilicata has more than one wine story.

At the Table Lucanian cooking: lucanica sausage, lamb with peperoni cruschi, cavatelli with beans, and pecorino di Filiano. Serve at 16–17°C.

Benchmark Producers Cantine Lagaria and De Biase, both at Roccanova.