Liguria

In the first century BC Diodorus Siculus wrote that Liguria had “neither olive trees nor vines, but forests… this land, which the gods love, is inaccessible to Ceres and Bacchus”. He was describing the region now best known for its olive oil and its wine. Getting either out of this ground took two thousand years of building walls.

The Landscape Liguria is a thin arc about 270 kilometres long, running from the French border to Tuscany, squeezed between the Alps, the Apennines and the sea. Seventy per cent of it is mountain or steep hill, mostly under forest, and the flat land is negligible. It is said to be two-faced like Janus, from whom Genoa is thought to take its name: one side looks at the sea, the other at the mountains. Geologically the split is real. The Riviera di Ponente to the west belongs to the Alpine chain, a rocky substratum with pale marly-calcareous strata, except at the Albenga plain where it runs into flysch. The Riviera di Levante to the east belongs to the Apennines and is the younger ground.

Engineering, Not Farming There is almost no land here that a vine can simply be planted in, so the region was rebuilt: terraces cut into the slope and held by dry-stone walls above the sea. About 5,000 hectares are under vine, and working them takes more than twice the effort of anywhere else in Italy with the possible exception of Valtellina. In the Cinque Terre, which runs from Punta Mesco to Punta di Montenero, terraces climb to 600 metres and the fruit comes down by funicular and monorail because nothing else can get up there. Even within those five villages the ground changes: Monterosso’s compact limestone-clay-siliceous soils give more alcohol, while Riomaggiore’s friable, acidic soils of disintegrated metamorphic schist give something lighter.

The Compensation What Liguria lacks in land it gets back in climate. Summer highs average 27°C, winter lows 7–8°C, annual rainfall about 1,500mm, and the mountains directly behind block the cold from the north. On the Ponente, where the mountains press less closely, vines climb inland around Ventimiglia, Vallecrosia and Albenga to 900 metres on quartzose sandstone and limestone; Rossese grows in the Nervia valley east of Ventimiglia. At the Tuscan end, Colli di Luni sits at the foot of the Apuan Alps on black schist and the first deposits of Tuscan macigno.

The Grapes Vermentino is the most planted and appears in every appellation. Pigato is the one to seek — a Ligurian biotype of Vermentino, broader and waxier, with a bitter almond finish and the structure to age several years. Albarola, Bosco, Bianchetta Genovese, Lumassina and Rollo fill out the whites, with Bosco and Albarola carrying the Cinque Terre. The reds are Rossese, genetically identical to Provence’s Tibouren; Ormeasco, which is Dolcetto under a local name; Granaccia, which is Grenache under another; plus Ciliegiolo, Sangiovese and Barbera. Eight DOCs cover the lot.

The Critical Take Liguria will never supply a large market and does not try to. Most of what is made is drunk within the region or by the people who holiday in it, and that scarcity is the main reason the wines are not better known. Pigato is the genuine find and the most misunderstood: it is not a light aperitivo white but a broad, textured, faintly bitter wine closer in feel to a Rhône white, and it improves for three to five years while almost everyone drinks it at six months. Sciacchetrà, the dried-grape sweet wine of the Cinque Terre, is one of Italy’s rarest wines and priced accordingly. The real threat is economic: tourism has made the land worth far more than the wine, and terraces are being abandoned faster than they are being rebuilt.

At the Table Pesto with trofie or trenette, focaccia, farinata of chickpea flour, anchovies from Monterosso, stuffed vegetables, and rabbit alla ligure with olives and pine nuts — which is the dish Pigato was made for. Serve the whites at 11–12°C and the reds barely cool.

Where to Start A Pigato from the Albenga side, given a year or two. Then Rossese di Dolceacqua, which is one of the most perfumed light reds in Italy.