The history of Vernazza

There vine cultivation It has been the main activity of our people for centuries.
There wine culture It has been fundamental for the evolution of our territory from a social, economic and cultural point of view.

Wine and Viticulture

The cultivation of vines has been the main activity of our people for centuries. The culture of wine has been fundamental for the evolution of our territory from a social, economic and cultural point of view. It has also deeply affected the transformation of the landscape, giving beauty to a territory that was only woods, rocks, arid land, clinging with its nails to the mountain.

The wine produced in the Cinque Terre was and is a “wine of the sea”. It comes from viticulture practiced on vineyards located on land overlooking the sea, spectacular, but exposed to the powerful south-westerly winds and salty seawater. Our wine is an exception that comes from the daily challenge that our ancestors had to face over the centuries. Nature had been very stingy with them. Ettore Cozzani says: “Nature had granted them a little bitter water and a little bare rock. The heroic life of a people has known, from generation to generation, to break the coast with a pickaxe; working with the strength of their arms alone, they have dug small shelves into the rock, bordered them with dry stone walls and planted vineyards and olive trees”.

The birth of the villages and terraces

Viticulture was already present in Roman times. Some toponyms of agricultural places of clear Latin origin are evidence of this. Planting vines in the Cinque Terre was, and still is today, an act of hope and trust in Nature. The inhabitants of the Cinque Terre did not live on the coast but on the hills around the Sanctuary of Nostra Signora di Reggio and in the hinterland.

Living by the sea was still too dangerous and uncomfortable. They went down at dawn and, in the evening, went back up over the mountains where they had their houses. So for a while they commuted. Of course they went on foot (we can, therefore, give them the credit for having anticipated, unknowingly, the “trekking” to the Cinque Terre).

Wine and trade

With the advent of the Republic of Genoa, with its consequent expansion towards the eastern coast of Liguria and the settlement of the Genoese in Portovenere, agriculture and wine took on a significant economic importance. Wine and grapes found their way to the market. The city of Genoa itself in the 12th century gave a notable boost to the trade of our wine. Numerous notarial documents attested to its transportation. This occurred exclusively by sea.

The sea, then, was the only possible means of communication. Land transport was practically impossible given the nature of the harsh and inhospitable territory. The Romans, although they were great road builders, gave up building any in the Cinque Terre. The steepness and landslides of the hills that rose straight up to the sea made the work impossible. In fact, they preferred to build the roads in Val di Vara. Easier. Here they only prepared a small, narrow path on the ridge corresponding to the current path no. 1, also known as the Alta Via delle Cinque Terre.

Phylloxera

An unexpected event called everything into question. A small insect appeared in the Cinque Terre. It was at the end of 1920. The vineyards were devastated. First the low ones, those with the most beautiful, healthiest and most robust vines. They withered quickly. The plant dried up and no one understood why.

Phylloxera was a disease unknown in Europe imported with the first strains of American vines. It devastated the Cinque Terre because it completely destroyed the economy of the Cinque Terre at that time, an economy based mainly on wine and grapes.

In 1920, an unknown insect, “phylloxera”, arrived, causing total devastation of the vineyards from Punta Mesco to Tramonti.