Liguria
Liguria: Italy's most difficult whites to make and most thrilling to drink
There is an Italian region where vineyards grow on hand-built terraced walls constructed over centuries, above the Mediterranean sea, on stony and poor soils that extract the maximum varietal character from the vine in exchange for very low yields and a physical effort that very few producers in the world are still willing to sustain. It is called Liguria — Italy's narrowest and most vertical region, where between the sea and the mountains there is almost no flat land, where every square metre of vineyard has been won from the forest and the rock through the work of generations of Ligurian farmers who had no other choice.
Liguria produces very little wine compared to other Italian regions — less than 1% of national production — yet it produces some of the most original, most territorial and most difficult to find whites in the entire peninsula. Wines that rarely travel beyond regional borders, that Ligurians drink among themselves and that sommeliers across Italy seek with increasing interest because they tell the story of a unique, irrepeatable territory impossible to imitate elsewhere.
The protagonist is Vermentino — but not the Sardinian Vermentino, more powerful and alcoholic. Ligurian Vermentino is its lighter, more floral and more immediate sibling: fresh, sapid, with a marine minerality that directly recalls the proximity to the Mediterranean, notes of white flowers, citrus and light aromatic herbs, a fresh acidity that makes it perfect with fresh fish and Ligurian seafood cuisine. On the Riviera Ligure di Ponente — between Albenga and Imperia — Vermentino expresses its most sunny and fragrant version, with that sapid and briny minerality that is the signature of these stony soils above the sea.
But alongside Vermentino there is Pigato — the quintessential Ligurian white for connoisseurs, the one that sommeliers seek and that the wider public still does not know well enough. Genetically related to Vermentino but with a completely autonomous and distinct character — more complex, more aromatic, more structured — Pigato grows exclusively on the Riviera Ligure di Ponente on poor and stony soils between Albenga and Imperia, developing a unique aromatic profile of Mediterranean herbs, rosemary, thyme, Ligurian scrubland and almond found in no other Italian variety. It is a white that requires time to understand — not the immediate freshness of Vermentino, but an aromatic complexity that opens slowly and always surprises those who discover it for the first time.
To the east, on the Riviera di Levante and in the Cinque Terre, grow Bosco, Albarola and Vermentino — the three indigenous varieties that make up the Cinque Terre DOC blend, the white wine that tourists from around the world drink overlooking the sea but that in its authentic artisan version is far more interesting and complex than its postcard fame might suggest. And then there is Sciacchetrà — the Cinque Terre passito, produced from dried grapes, sweet and amber-coloured, one of Italy's rarest and most precious sweet wines.
Emporio Divino selects the white wines of Liguria from the artisan producers of the Riviera di Ponente who best interpret Pigato and Vermentino — those who tend terraced vineyards above the sea with generational dedication and bring into the glass all the character of a region that has made difficulty its greatest strength.
