Campania: More Than Just Fiano, Greco and Aglianico

BY IAN D'AGATA | NOVEMBER 6, 2018

Not much appears to have changed in Campania since my last article on Vinous, published in November 2016. The region’s strong suit continues to be its white wines. In fact, it’s safe to say that Campania, along with Alto Adige, Marche and Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG), is where your chances of finding a stellar Italian white wine are highest, thanks to a plethora of high-quality white varieties and adept winemakers.

Campania’s red wines are another story. Great progress has been made with Piedirosso, a difficult variety that only reaches optimal physiological ripeness in the best terroirs and in long, warm growing seasons. Numerous estates make delicious, light-bodied, fragrant, quickly accessible wines. And yet Aglianico and the most important wines it informs – Taburno and Taurasi – remain huge missed opportunities. One of the world’s most underrated red wine grapes, Aglianico is held back by shortsighted viticultural and winemaking decisions, such as allowing the grapes to overripen on the vine (in search of needlessly high alcohol levels that are now out of fashion) and using oak of questionable quality. Some Aglianico wines also do not taste especially dry, no matter what the residual sugar levels provided by producers might indicate. For these reasons, potentially great Italian wines such as Taburno and Taurasi fail to join the ranks of the world’s top reds. And this is a real shame; you only have to taste the wines of Contrade di Taurasi/Lonardo, Guastaferro, and Mastroberardino, for example, to realize that world-class wines could be made with the Aglianico grape.

Typical coastline vineyards of Campania

A Large Selection of Excellent Wine Grapes

Only Alto Adige and Friuli Venezia Giulia can match Campania in their large numbers of high-quality white wine grapes. (By contrast, the Marche’s best whites are mostly made from just one grape, Verdicchio.) The list in Campania includes Fiano (arguably Italy’s best native white grape), Greco, Coda di Volpe Bianca, Caprettone, Biancolella, Forastera, Falanghina Flegrea and Falanghina Beneventana. There are also some very interesting whites being made with Pallagrello Bianco, Asprinio Bianco, Catalanesca, Ripoli, Ginestra and Fenile, although the last three are still very sparsely planted and limited to the Amalfi coast. Among red grapes, not just Aglianico and Piedirosso but also Pallagrello Nero, Casavecchia, Sciascinoso, Tintore di Tramonti and Coda di Volpe Rossa are capable of giving something special. For a more detailed discussion of Campania’s many different grape varieties and wines, please refer to my November 2016 article entitled “Campania: Getting Better and Better.”

Up-and-Coming Wine Areas Worth Knowing