In vino veritas

Viticulture, according to a tour guide we met, came to the Cinque Terre about two thousand years ago; the villages themselves date, as far as we know, to about one thousand years ago. The Cinque Terre is approximately two-thirds the size of Manhattan, and about ten percent is arable; within that space, there are some three thousand miles of terraces, supported by dry stone walls. This represents a truly massive engineering effort, all done by hand, and perhaps with a few draft animals.

It is often reported that amphorae marked "Corniglia" have been found at excavations of Pompeii. This, however, is almost certainly a family name rather than an indication that the wine therein originated from the Cinque Terre. Pompeii, after all, was destroyed in A.D. 79, at which point the village of Corniglia likely did not exist; certainly it would have been early days for the wine industry here, and in any case, Pompeii itself was known to have been a producer and exporter of wine. Nevertheless, wine is certainly part of the Cinque Terre experience for most residents and visitors, and clearly has been for a long time.

[Vineyards in the hills of Corniglia.]

Three wines to be aware of:

We were frequently served prosecco, an Italian sparkling wine similar in some respects to champagne and serving the same welcoming/celebratory function. It actually originates from northeastern Italy (the Cinque Terre is in the northwest), but no one was complaining. It varies from dry to fairly sweet.

Vino delle Cinque Terre is a non-sparkling white wine, leaning toward dry, made from a blend of local grapes: Bosco, Albarola, and Vermentino. (Labels often bear the initials BAV, sometimes with respective percentages.) The latter two varieties are grown widely throughout Italy, but Bosco is more or less endemic to Liguria, the region which includes the Cinque Terre. Excellent with seafood, which, conveniently, is a major part of the local cucina.

Sciacchetrà is a passito or "straw wine" version of vino delle Cinque Terre, which is to say it is made from the same BAV trinity of white grapes, but the grapes are dried to near-raisin status before being pressed. This results in much higher sugar and alcohol content; sciacchetrà is a dessert wine. Because yields are much lower (it takes a lot more raisins than grapes to produce an equivalent amount of juice), it is considerably more expensive as well.

Salute!

[Not all of the grapevines are in vineyards; some spill from the walls of little courtyard gardens, or climb balconies in the villages.]

[Wine presses abound; however picturesque, not all of them, I suspect, are decorative.]

[In the words of Catholic liturgy, "Fruit of the vine, and work of human hands."]

UPDATE: Special thanks to our sommelier, Alessandro, at Vernazza Winexperience. Highly recommended. This is the entrance, on Via San Giovanni Battista:

And this is the setting, as seen from below (the deck is at centre):

Not a bad place to sit and enjoy a glass of wine...