If you visit the Cinque Terre you must indulge yourself with wine. The two things come together, Cinque Terre and Wines.
If you haven’t been there yet, imagine to see 5 little villages nested on steep valleys and cliffs of hard rocks, where the humans have tried hard to gain every single centimeter from mother nature to plant all the necessaries. This is how the famous and beautiful Terraces were created. An ingenious solution to have more space to grown plants.
One of the main thing that needed to be planted were grapes. Vernazza it was the first village to start the production of wine that actually become quite famous in the mediaeval times and demanded in Europe, as documents confirm.
Later all the other villages, Riomaggiore, Corniglia, Monterosso al Mare e Manarola followed. If even the old days are gone, wines nowadays are planted everywhere in the National Parks on this unique terraces.
Nowadays we are fascinated by this unique landscape but this had a cost of lots of hard manual work through century to built terraces and to maintain them.
As a tourist we just get the sight point of view but as a local you see them as a result of generations of ancestors.
We must be grated to the old generations that remained here, even when life was calling them away from their mother land, offering better opportunities, like what have happened post World War II.
These heroes choose to remain and work this arid and infertile land and today their grandchildren and enjoying their fruits.
Take your time to visit the National Park of the Cinque Terre by foot, hiking from town to town on these terraces, your eyes will be thrilled by how much beauty, such a difficult land can give.
Two main wines are produced here, one of them has a very hard name to pronounce but it is also the most famous of the 2, SCIACHETTRA.
A divine nectar served with biscuits even this is not traditional. Better to have it as a wine in a wine glass, cold (8-10°C) without dry sweet biscuits.
The other one is a nice dry white wine, CINQUE TERRE DOC. As you can imagine every slope and every mountain produces a different wine.
Here is a list of producer approved by the National park. http://www.parconazionale5terre.it/prodotti-dettaglio.php?id=3349
The National park has been fundamental to help producers to find new funds and ideas to produce wines and a new generation of Vignaioli is growing in the Cinque terre.
Don’t miss the chance during your visit of Italy to stop and have a glass of wine here in the Cinque terre.
