Wine route
Cinque Terre Terrace Trail
2 days · 6 stops
Open the driveLiguria · DOC
Cinque Terre/Cinque Terre Sciacchetrà DOC Saline Whites and Sciacchetra from the Terraced Cliffs
Cinque Terre DOC is wine from a cliff. Dry-stone terraces climb above Riomaggiore, Vernazza and Monterosso. Every job here is done by hand or by monorail. Bosco leads the salty whites. Dry those same grapes in a village attic and you get Sciacchetra, one of Italy's rarest sweet wines.
3
Wines live now
£29-£41
Price range today
3
UK retailers
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 in the zoneOutside the zone
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
Every live Cinque Terre/Cinque Terre Sciacchetrà listing, cheapest to dearest
3 wines · 3 retailers
Live prices, compared across 3 UK retailers.
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.
How Cinque Terre/Cinque Terre Sciacchetrà is made
Every Cinque Terre wine starts from the same blend. Bosco makes up at least 40 percent. Albarola and Vermentino together can reach 40 percent. Other local whites can add up to 20 percent. The yield cap is 9 tonnes of grapes per hectare. That looks modest on paper. In practice it is heroic work, because every tonne rides a monorack trolley down the cliff. Three sottozone tighten the rules further: Costa de Sera, Costa de Campu and Costa da Posa. Their cap drops to 8.5 tonnes, and the grapes must reach 11 percent natural alcohol. Sciacchetra uses the same grapes, dried on racks inside the zone. At most 40 percent of their weight may become wine. The finished wine must reach 17 percent total alcohol, with at least 13.5 percent developed. It cannot be sold before the 1st of November after harvest. The Riserva waits until the 1st of November of the third year.
In depth
Here the vineyards are the landscape. Around seven thousand kilometres of dry-stone wall hold the terraces in place. The cliffs below them fall straight into the Ligurian Sea. Locals often compare the effort to the Great Wall. The DOC arrived in 1973 to protect what was left. The walls only stand while someone farms them.
The white is the daily wine. Bosco gives it backbone, and Albarola and Vermentino give it lift. People drink it with anchovies from the same villages.
Sciacchetra is the treasure. The name is dialect, and it means roughly press and leave. The method has not changed. The best bunches dry on racks in airy attics until November. They are then pressed to yield less than half their weight. The wine ages to a golden amber colour, with honey, dried apricot and sea salt. The rules hold it to 17 degrees total. Only a few thousand half-bottles are made in a good year, which is why it costs what it costs.
The Cantina Cinque Terre cooperative at Groppo keeps the volume side alive and bottles all three coste. Smaller growers work plots reached by boat and monorail. Possa, at Riomaggiore, farms the Costa da Posa that the estate is named for. Buy the white young and cold. Buy Sciacchetra whenever you see it, because you will not see it often.
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
It is the sweet wine of the Cinque Terre, made from dried grapes. Bosco-led bunches dry in village attics. At most 40 percent of their weight is then pressed into wine. That wine reaches 17 percent total alcohol. It goes on sale the November after harvest, and the Riserva waits until its third year.
Bosco is at least 40 percent of the blend. Albarola and Vermentino together can reach 40 percent. Other local whites can add up to 20 percent. The same blend serves the dry bianco, the three coste and the Sciacchetra.
They are the DOC's three official sottozone, single coste above Riomaggiore. The DOC rules map each one parcel by parcel. Yields drop to 8.5 tonnes, and the minimum natural alcohol 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, and some plots only by boat. The walls need constant rebuilding. The 9-tonne yield cap is a paper figure, and the real crop is usually far less.
Lemon, green herbs and almond, over a strongly salty finish. It is light-bodied and brisk. It is made for the villages' anchovies, both fried and marinated.