Vesuvio DOC

The vineyards on the flanks of Vesuvius sit on land that has been buried repeatedly and farmed anyway. The DOC covers the slopes of the volcano and the adjoining Somma ridge, within sight of Naples, and produces red, white and rosé under two names: Vesuvio for the base wines, and Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio for the superior tier, which carries a higher minimum alcohol and stricter yields.

The Terroir Loose volcanic sand, ash and lapilli — black, free-draining, layered over successive earlier eruptions. The critical consequence is entomological rather than geological: phylloxera cannot move through sand, so the louse that destroyed European viticulture never took hold here. A high proportion of the vines are piede franco, ungrafted and growing on their own roots, and many are very old, trained on the traditional low pergola. Whether ungrafted vines taste different is argued about endlessly; what is not in doubt is that the soil is porous, potassium-rich and almost sterile, that yields are naturally low, and that the wines carry a smoky, faintly sulphurous savour difficult to find anywhere else.

Grape Varieties

• Caprettone: the principal white, long assumed to be Coda di Volpe and confirmed by DNA as a distinct variety. Moderate weight, yellow apple, herb, and a distinctly saline finish.
• Coda di Volpe: also permitted, and genuinely present alongside Caprettone in older plantings.
• Piedirosso: the principal red, known locally as Per’ e Palummo, “dove’s foot”, after the red stems of the bunch. Pale, herbal, low in tannin.
• Aglianico: a permitted minority partner, supplying the structure and colour Piedirosso lacks.

The Critical Take These wines were a tourist commodity for most of the twentieth century and are only now being taken seriously, largely by a small number of growers working the highest parcels inside the national park. The whites have travelled furthest: a good Caprettone is a genuinely distinctive Italian white, saline and smoky and quite unlike the Fiano and Greco of inland Campania. The reds remain a specialist taste, and are best understood as light, savoury wines rather than as underpowered ones.

At the Table Neapolitan cooking almost without exception: pizza, spaghetti with clams, the tomatoes grown on the same volcanic soil, fried fish, and mozzarella di bufala. Whites at 10–12°C, reds lightly chilled at 14–15°C. Almost nothing made here is built to age, and very little of it needs to be: these are wines for the year after the harvest.

Benchmark Producers Villa Matilde, Sorrentino, Cantina del Vesuvio, Casa Setaro, Villa Dora.