THIS LITTLE-KNOWN DENOMINATION and wine so clearly bring to light the very essence of Italy’s regionality in wine production. The nose of this sweet wine starts off with Mediterranean brush and green sage, then evolves to show dried dates, golden rasins, and vanilla notes. This wine is the real nectar of the Mediterranean coastline.
Walter De Batté is a man of impossible undertakings. In a world that seeks comfort and ease, Walter has chosen one of the most difficult jobs out there: winemaking in the Cinque Terre. Although he could have easily become a factory worker or naval officer in La Spezia, he decided to throw himself into the precarious world of wine. Walter, however, is steadfast, firm in his beliefs, and even a little crazy, like the rest of the people who have chosen to live in the Cinque Terre, an area made up of five small towns, all clinging to the rocky Ligurian coastline. Here, the mountains—and we are talking about the real mountains—meet the sea, without any interruption.
In the past, the inhabitants of this area were not fishermen, but farmers. Afraid of the mighty Mediterranean, many people feared being swept out to sea. Therefore, most decided to work the land: an extremely difficult task because the hills sloped at more than 45 degrees. Farmers had to build large, strong terraces to define the local landscape. Today, there are almost 4,000 miles of dry-stone walls, from the sea to 3,200 feet above. And to top it all off, the soil itself was rocky and of poor quality. These crazy farmers were forced to retrieve sand from the beaches and carry it on their backs in large baskets up to their fields to enrich the soil. It is for good reason that the sister monument of the UNESCO-protected Cinque Terre National Park is the Great Wall of China. Until the end of the seventeenth century, around 4,000 acres of the area were covered with vineyards. The number has since dropped to 200 acres. The only cultivated areas are those near roads, because the rest of the land is too expensive and too physically demanding to harvest.
Walter is fighting a battle to keep agriculture alive in the Cinque Terre. The abandonment of the terraced fields, or fasce as they are called locally, has led to the erosion of the soil and landslides. But thanks in large part to the hard work and tenacity of Walter, critics across the globe have started paying attention to the wines of the area. Walter has made a name for himself for his revival of the bosco grape variety, the use of barriques, and the length of time his must spends on the lees. At first, Walter’s fellow winemakers turned their nose up at his “inventions,” but within fifteen short years, he has proved himself right. Walter’s wines are rich in minerality and salty notes, followed by floral and fruity aromas. The price of one of his bottles is definitely higher than white wines produced from vineyards that are easier to cultivate. And justly so. To harvest his grapes, Walter and his staff have to climb up and down seven hundred to eight hundred stairs carrying 25-liter containers full of hand-harvested grapes on their backs—quite a time-consuming and exhausting feat.
Walter Batté’s winery is located in downtown Riomaggiore—the fifth and farthest south of the Cinque Terre—on one of the town’s picturesque narrow roads, called carrugi in Liguria. It can be reached only by foot and only by climbing a good number of stairs. A bunch of grapes painted on the winery’s small wooden door and the aroma of wine perceptible from the street tips off the attentive wine lover that there is another world behind that door and that it is not someone’s home. The barriques and fermentation vats are located on the ground floor of this unassuming building. Inside his cellar, Walter produces no more than 3,000 bottles annually, with grapes from his 5 acres of land divided among eighteen different parcels of Riomaggiore. These parcels vary in size from microscopic (a row or two of vines) to 5,400 square feet. In addition to the already difficult agricultural conditions, in recent years the vineyards have also been under the attack of wild boars. The boars present a real threat, especially because they multiply like rabbits and are protected by the Italian national park service. On multiple occasions, Walter was unable to produce his wine because of the hungry beasts. What may have seemed like a dream at the beginning—that of reviving the agricultural traditions of the Cinque Terre—has proved to be a real challenge.
One of the first difficulties Walter encountered when he set out to make wine in the Cinque Terre had to do with the grape variety he selected to grow: bosco, which means “forest” in Italian. Bosco is a wild variety, native to Italy, that had practically disappeared over the years. The local farmers were reluctant to plant bosco because of its low productivity and acidity, tending to prefer simpler grapes like vermentino and trebbiano. But Walter and a few other pioneering winemakers understood the value of this variety and its strong bond to the territory. Most of the soil in the Cinque Terre is composed of rock; there is very little fertile earth. Bosco grapes, however, are accustomed to the rocky soil and have a wild, yet very resistant, character. They need just a little water to survive and do not suffer from the sea air that leaves salty deposits on the leaves of the plants. Bosco was born to live and thrive here.
Sciacchetrà, Walter’s wine made from bosco grapes, is an anthem to the land: sapid, minerally, and containing strong perfumes of rosemary and Mediterranean flora. In the mouth, the wine’s sweetness is never cloying, but evocative and refreshed by fierce and juicy acidity. With annual production limited to 1,000 bottles a year, Sciacchetrà is a rare gem for lovers of sweet wines.