Harvest 2017: quality and quantity for D.O.C. 5 Terre wine

This year, in Volastra, in the heart of the Cinque Terre National Park, the season reserved a wonderful sunshine and a complete lack of rainfall from late May to late September, which guaranteed an optimal maturation of the grapes and the absence of issues related to the main diseases that can afflict vineyards, namely oidio and peronospera.
Our terraced vineyards, as per millenary tradition, are still almost completely cultivated with pergola plant, “autedo” in the local dialect, protecting the bunches from the strong sun rays allowing a gradual and optimal maturation and at the same time providing greater production than the classic spinning plant.
As usual we have vinified some of our white grapes of the three different qualities Bosco, Vermentino and Albarola, in the “Torchio”, the secular family cellar and the rest we have given to the Cinque Terre Social Cooperative, of which we have been members since 1982, year of its foundation.
The Social Cooperative is an extremely important structure for our fragile and difficult territory since it deals with the management and maintenance of both irrigation aqueduct and all the rack monorails, the main pillars for the maintenance of agriculture and therefore of the landscape in the Cinque Terre National Park.
In addition to the DOC 5 Terre dry wine, this year, given favorable weather conditions, we have also managed to produce a good amount of “Sciacchetrà”, the mythical sweet wine that used to be served on the tables of kings and popes which, while I am writing this article, it is still completing its fermentation in a chestnut wood barrel, built by a local craftsman.
The “Sciacchetrà” 2017 will then be bottled with high quality cork in March/April 2019 and will reach its optimum refinement only in 2022, after 5 years of vinification.
Finally, a great thank-you goes to our friends and family from Bergamo whose presence this year, has reached the incredible goal of the 18th consecutive vintage in the Cinque Terre, demonstrating once again a great tenacity and attachment to our beautiful but hostile territory!!!