Cinque Terre

We finally took some time off to go visit our friends Giulia and Francesco, two musicians from Lerici now living in London but back home because of the pandemic.

There are many things we love about the Cinque Terre area, the food, the rocky beaches, the hikes to reach them and the uniquely rude Ligurian hospitality. But what about the wines here?

They call it heroic viticulture. Steep, almost vertical tiny plots of land in front of the water producing an incredibly small number of bottles with an immense effort: no machinery whatsoever and many, many, many steps. A wine entrepreneur could look at this an think “why? These people are crazy!” and most of times he’s probably going to be right from a business perspective, but the point he’s missing is simply that money was never a part of the equation. The vines, the garden, the orchard, the sea, they all have a rhythm you can tune in to, and that’s the game the farmer of that vineyard is playing, year after year. Does that make him/her a hero because he/she chose a simple life? In 2020, maybe. All I know is that I would love to know how that wine tastes like!

What do you think? Pretty salty?