Savuto DOC

A river valley denomination running inland from the Tyrrhenian coast across the provinces of Cosenza and Catanzaro, and one of the oldest named wines in Italy. The registered file states plainly that this wine has been prized since antiquity and was celebrated by Pliny and Strabo.

The Name The file gives the Roman form: Sanutum. The wine takes its name from the river Savuto, and the file draws the distinction that matters — Savuto is set apart from other Calabrian wines because it comes from vines planted on the slopes of the mountains that overlook the river, not on the coastal plain. That is a nineteen-century-old observation about site selection, preserved in a European legal document.

The Terroir Some twenty communes share the valley, from Rogliano and Scigliano in the Cosentino hills down through Aiello Calabro and Cleto to Amantea on the sea. The vineyards climb the flanks of the Catena Costiera, on granitic and sandy soils weathered from the Sila massif, at altitudes that reach 700 metres within sight of the water. The combination of a Tyrrhenian climate and real elevation is the whole point of the place.

Grape Varieties Gaglioppo leads, required at a minimum of 35 per cent, with Magliocco Canino, Greco Nero, Nerello Cappuccio and Aglianico alongside. A white is made from Greco Bianco and Malvasia, at a minimum of only 10.5 per cent alcohol.

The Critical Take Gaglioppo is a difficult grape — pale, high in alcohol, high in acid, with tannin that can be coarse — and most Calabrian wine made from it is either rustic or over-corrected. Savuto is where it is most consistently good, because the altitude gives the acidity somewhere to sit and the granite gives the wine a savoury, dusty grip rather than a hard one. The style is old-fashioned in the best sense: orange-rimmed, dried cherry and blood orange, herbal, unmistakably southern and never heavy. Almost none of it leaves the region.

Calabria’s Two Reds The region rests on Gaglioppo, and it has two zones that show it properly: Cirò on the Ionian side, hotter, flatter and better known, and Savuto on the Tyrrhenian, higher and cooler. Tasted side by side they make the case for Calabrian wine better than either does alone.

At the Table Calabrian cooking: nduja, pork and chilli, fileja pasta with goat ragù, grilled swordfish for the white, and pecorino crotonese. Serve the red at 16–17°C, cooler in summer.

Benchmark Producers Odoardi, whose family has farmed here since 1480 and who effectively carry the denomination, and Colacino.