Terenzuola, Vigne Basse Vermentino, Toscana

Ivan Giuliani, winemaker and co-owner of the Terenzuola estate, is proud to be living and making wine ‘between Liguria and Tuscany’, according to the strapline on his website. He grew up near Lake Maggiore, a vast lake that straddles the Italian regions of Piemonte and Lombardia and the Swiss canton of Ticino, but in the early 1990s he returned to the farm where he had spent his childhood summer holidays.

At the heart of Terenzuola, based in Fosdinovo in the Colli di Luni just east of La Spezia on the Ligurian coast, was the 3-ha (7.5-acre) hilly property bought by his grandfather Luigi when he returned to Italy from New York in the early 1930s after the Depression, thinking it would be ‘ideal to grow vines, olive trees, vegetables and to produce honey’ to feed his family and to sell at the local market. This is where Giuliani came while still a student, to make wine and decide his future.

As Giuliani explains on the Terenzuola website, ‘In 1995, I found myself having to carry out my mandatory military service in a location between Friuli and Slovenia. Here I experienced the strong attachment to the land that the people living on the boundary between two countries have; this inspired and pushed me to choose to be a winemaker for life.’

In the late 1990s he went on to buy and plant vineyards, sourcing cuttings from their oldest vines (over 100 years old) and turning an old barn into a winery. Then twenty years ago he conceived of a ‘project without regional borders’. In partnership with a friend and local farmer Marco Nicolini, he now farms 22 ha (54 acres) in Fosdinovo, Castelnuovo and Sarzana, all certified organic, in the Colli di Luni appellation that, unusually, sits astride both Tuscany and Liguria, as shown at the bottom right of this World Atlas of Wine map of north-west Italy. (He also makes wine from terraces overlooking the sea in the Cinque Terre region of Liguria.)

But when I asked Giuliani about the significance of working across borders, he replied to say that ‘there is no real “border zone” because the area where we produce our wine is called Lunigiana, a region that spans the border between Tuscany and Liguria. People from Tuscany often think we belong to Liguria, while those from Liguria believe we come from Tuscany … So, ideologically speaking, the border between Liguria and Tuscany doesn’t exist.’ There’s a theme developing here.

Vigne Basse is one of several Vermentino wines made by Giuliani. The Terenzuola vineyards comprise 60–65% of this Italian grape variety – also known as Favorita in Piemonte, Pigato in Liguria and now compulsorily referred to as Rolle in southern France – that enjoys proximity to the sea.

This particular version comes from their lower-elevation vines (hence Vigne Basse) at 50–100 m (164–328 ft) in elevation near Caniparola, 5 km (3 miles) from the sea as the crow flies. It is just inside Tuscany but within spitting distance of the border with Liguria. As Terenzuola’s Rita Mannella explained, ‘The coast has a lot of influence on all of our wines because we don’t have any natural barrier to the sea influence. So we receive the wind from the sea, and we have the capability of the sea to mitigate the weather.’

I recently tasted the 2023 Vigne Basse at The Dirty Dozen tasting in London, an event organised by 12 small and medium-sized UK importers. It was at the end of a long day spent sipping, spitting and typing at a slightly-too-high poser table but its fresh, pure, herbal and apple-and-pear aromas and flavours along with a stony/salty, dry, palate-grabbing texture restored my energy.

Since the 2024 Vigne Basse has also just been shipped to the UK, I tasted this younger, cooler vintage, which has 13% alcohol rather than the 13.5% of the 2023. 2024 was apparently one of the coolest years in the last decade. The flavours are a touch more restrained, more citrus and less orchard fruit, yet there is still at the core the classic Vermentino scent, here with a little more emphasis on the stony/salty finish thanks to the cooler weather.

The 2023 has benefited from an extra year in bottle and I think the 2024 will be even better in a year’s time (and will age longer than that). They may be slightly different in style but they are equally delicious and drinkable, with finesse and persistence.

Retaining freshness is one of Giuliani’s obsessions, it seems. Hand-harvesting starts in September but the moment of picking varies across the several vineyard parcels. Grapes from these soils are a little lower in acidity than those from their shale soils – where they grow Vermentino for their Fosso di Corsano label – so in the Vigne Basse they include 5% Albarola to raise the acidity a little. They also avoid malolactic conversion in all their white wines for the same reason.

The cellar is on four levels so the grapes are moved by gravity in order to preserve the quality of the fruit. Slow pressing is followed by fermentation with ambient yeasts in stainless-steel tanks, where the wine then ages four months on lees before bottling.

I asked Giuliani about the greatest challenge he faces as a winegrower in this region. I expected him to say something about climate change or steeply sloping vineyards but he placed his reply in a much broader context, referring to ‘the Hindu concept of Brahman, in which there are no boundaries and each of us is part of the whole … In this way, respect for others will seem simple, as will behaving in a way that leads us to improve, living alongside nature and animals.’ The greatest challenge is therefore ‘to act with the awareness of what previous generations have gifted us, ensuring that what we leave behind is respectful of those who will come after us. This involves not only respect for nature, but also for rhythms, people and every aspect that nourishes the search for balance and meaning in everything we do.’

He went on to describe himself more specifically as ‘a guardian among the vineyards’, enhancing local grape varieties, reintroducing trees and fruit-bearing plants within the vineyard, respecting ‘maturation rhythms’, planting cover crops and allowing flowers to bloom to encourage beneficial insects rather than using agrochemicals.

In the cellar, he sees himself as ‘an impartial referee’, using gravity and conveyor belts rather than pumps, intervening as little as possible, and choosing different winemaking vessels that best suit each variety.

These are two vintages of a seamless wine unconstrained by borders made by a winegrower inspired by living and working beyond them.

Terenzuola Vigne Basse is widely available in the US, where it is imported by Skurnik Wines. In the UK, it is imported by Caroline Brangé’s new enterprise Vins de Vie and sold via the company’s retail arm Ealing Wine Cellars (EWC). Brangé is offering free delivery for three bottles or more of either vintage. EWC currently stock both the 2023 and 2024. For free delivery in the UK, use the code JULIASPICK. The wines are also available in Italy and Germany.

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All images apart from the map are courtesy of Terenzuola.

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Italy Tuscany Liguria Vermentino

Julia Harding MW