Please click the thumbnails to view large images.
|
|
|
Few regions blend history and the modern day as seamlessly as does Cantina Farro in southern Italy. Here vines share land with Roman ruins, growing as they did when their original owners crafted wines for ancient emperors. The region’s native grape varietals—Falanghina and Piedirosso—were probably originally planted by Greek hands, artisans who read Homer while gazing at the gorgeous island of Ischia across the volcanic bay.
Winemaker Michele Farro has fought to preserve the region’s native varietals and is himself the head of the Campi Flegrei DOC. This position has allowed Michele to further the knowledge and passion for these grapes that with every sip speak of ancient history and the delicious future of southern Italian wines.
The land of Campi Flegrei—a short peninsula to the west of Naples that reaches into the sea to point toward the islands Procida and Ischia—is all volcanic. Just like Vesuvius to the southeast, Campi Flegrei is an active volcanic region that has over the centuries both ravaged the land with eruptions and blessed it with the resulting fertile, volcanic soils. These soils are soft and porous and high in minerals (especially sulfur), characteristics that helped to fend off phylloxera and has allowed Farro to maintain a number of vineyards with original rootstock (“a piede franco” in Italian).
The scene from Farro’s vineyards is one to behold—at points more than 1,800 feet above sea level, vines climb along terraces dug into the black volcanic earth. Here is a meeting place for ancient winds—the “tramontane” howls down from the snow-capped Apennine Mountains while the desert sands of northern Africa blow the warm “sirocco” on sweltering summer days. This competition keeps vines—many pre-phylloxera vines more than 100 years old—healthy, in addition to the influence of the winds off the sea and the nearby Lago d’Averno, a lake that was previously a volcanic caldera.
Established by Michele Farro’s grandfather in 1926, Cantine Farro has always been a family operation, and the Farro family’s dedication to low yields, artisanal winemaking and Italy’s native varietals is what drew us to this exacting estate. There are few wineries in southern Italy that deliver wine as true to the land and to history as does Cantina Farro.