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Liguria · DOC
Cinque Terre/Cinque Terre Sciacchetrà DOC Saline Whites and Sciacchetra from the Terraced Cliffs
Wine from a cliff: the Cinque Terre DOC covers the dry-stone terraces stacked above Riomaggiore, Vernazza and Monterosso, farmed by hand and monorail. Bosco leads the saline whites, and the same grapes, dried in village attics, become Sciacchetra, one of Italy's rarest sweet wines.
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Decode the label
What the label tells you
One word on the front changes the ageing, the strength and the price.
On the label
Bianco
The dry white of the terraces
11% minimum alcohol
40%+ Bosco
Drink it young, cold and within sight of the sea if you can manage it.
In stock from £24.30
On the label
The three coste
Costa de Sera, de Campu, da Posa
8.5 t/ha tighter cru yields
Single-costa bottlings from mapped parcels above Riomaggiore.
No bottles in stock right now
On the label
Sciacchetra
The attic-dried rarity
17% total, 13.5 developed
Riserva waits three Novembers
A few thousand half-bottles a year; hard cheese or nothing.
No bottles in stock right now
The boundary
Where it is
Everything on this page, the estates, the bottles, the sub-zones, sits inside this line.
Estate 1
Azienda Agricola Possa
Visit →Riomaggiore
Tastings available
Denomination
Grapes Used
Cinque Terre/Cinque Terre Sciacchetrà DOC zone
Estates you can visit Wine route
The zone is the terraced Riviera between Punta Mesco and Punta di Montenero: the whole communes of Monterosso, Vernazza and Riomaggiore plus the Tramonti coast of Portovenere, all in La Spezia province. Vines grow on dry-stone terraces that fall from the coast path to the water, and the three crus sit together above Riomaggiore and Volastra on the zone's warmest, steepest stretch.
Inside the zone
3
communes entire, plus Portovenere's Tramonti coast
3
mapped sottozone above Riomaggiore
9 t/ha
maximum yield (8.5 in the crus)
40%
maximum must-to-wine yield for Sciacchetra
Click or tap a pin for its estate. The numbered pins match the estate cards below.
Towns worth knowing
Riomaggiore
Manarola
Vernazza
Monterosso al Mare
Volastra
The co-op cellar sits at Groppo above Manarola; Possa farms from Riomaggiore itself.
In the glass
What it tastes like, by style
One profile at a time, never blended into a single set of bars.
Lemon
Almond
Wet stones
Honey
Apricot
Raisin
The disciplinare
The rules that define it
The same table on every denomination page, straight from the production rules.
Grape & its role
Share of the blend
050100%
Solid means the rules demand it. Striped means optional, up to that amount. The words on the right say the same rule.
Appassimento stays in the zone Sciacchetra's grapes must dry, press and age inside the DOC's own territory.
40 percent, twice Bosco is at least 40 percent of the blend, and Sciacchetra's must yields at most 40 percent of its weight.
The crus are mapped to the sheet each costa is delimited on named cadastral sheets of Riomaggiore commune.
Patience is legal tender Sciacchetra releases the November after harvest; the Riserva waits until its third.
Ageing and alcohol minimums per tier are in the label guide above.
Editor's cellar
Bottles to try, and what Cinque Terre/Cinque Terre Sciacchetrà costs in the UK
Cellar doors · inside the zone
Estates you can visit
One estate inside the zone opens its doors today. A small list, honestly kept: only working cellars with confirmed visits appear here.
No estates match these filters. Clear a filter to see more.
The mapped crus
The costa
Three coste above Riomaggiore carry their own name on the label, each delimited sheet by sheet in the disciplinare.
Costa de Sera
Sheet 30A single costa above Riomaggiore, mapped to sheet 30 of the commune's cadastre: yields tighten to 8.5 tonnes and the minimum rises to 11 percent natural.
Costa de Campu
Sheets 15-16Terraces on sheets 15 and 16 of Riomaggiore around the hamlet of Groppo, named for the campo, the rare flat patch; same 8.5-tonne cap as its sibling coste.
Costa da Posa
Sheet 4Sheet 4 of Riomaggiore, delimited off the Groppo-Volastra-Corniglia road: the cru Possa's growers made famous, capped at 8.5 tonnes with 11 percent minimum.
Must visit
Azienda Agricola Possa
Vintage provenance
Why there is no vintage chart
No denomination-wide vintage chart is published for the Cinque Terre: production is tiny and quality tracks the grower and the costa more than the year.
What to check instead
The costa: where a wine comes from inside the zone changes what is in the glass. See them above.
The producer: quality here is tracked estate by estate rather than year by year.
On the table
What to eat with Cinque Terre/Cinque Terre Sciacchetrà
The home country leads; global pairings that genuinely work follow.
In-depth guide
Cinque Terre/Cinque Terre Sciacchetrà, answered
The Cinque Terre's dried-grape sweet wine: Bosco-led bunches raisined in village attics, pressed to at most 40 percent of their weight, reaching 17 percent total alcohol. Release waits until the November after harvest, and the Riserva until its third year.
Bosco at 40 percent minimum, Albarola and Vermentino together up to 40, and other local whites to 20. The same blend serves the dry bianco, the three crus and the Sciacchetra.
The DOC's three official sottozone, single coste above Riomaggiore mapped parcel by parcel in the disciplinare. Yields drop to 8.5 tonnes and the natural minimum rises to 11 percent; the co-op bottles all three.
Because nothing here is mechanised: the terraces are reached on foot or by monorack rail, some plots by boat, and the walls need constant rebuilding. A 9-tonne yield cap on paper is usually far less in the glass.
Lemon, green herbs and almond over an emphatically saline finish: light-bodied, brisk and made for the villages' anchovies, both fried and marinated.