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The Italian Vineyard

GIANFRANCO TEMPESTA

MONICA FIORILO

ENOTRIA TELLUS

The evolution of viticulture is in perfect harmony with the social, political and economic changes in Italy.

When Goethe visited Enotria Tellus, he met with a countryside adorned with hedges and wooded areas and croplands interspersed with rows of vines. The statistics confirm that this “viticulture territory” characterized the Italian landscape until the 1970s. The exceptions to this kind of viticulture, aridly define as “mixed-cropping,” in the censuses are the Langhe and Monferrato areas of Piedmont, Oltrepò Pavese and the neighbouring area of Piacenza, with a French-style, abbatial and noble kind of “specialized viticulture.”

The south, the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, maintains a “large-estate” identity similar to the Spanish one, but there are two atypical regions also in this area, Campania, and Abruzzo, with mixed-cropping viticulture on estates belonging to small self-employed farmers.

Given these centuries-old diversities, it is essential to analyse the profound changes that have taken place in the land and, consequently, the landscape, since the Second World War. This historical period has seen rural Italy evolve into an urban, industrial country, today moving towards the tertiary sector.

Agriculture and viticulture, typically with production destined to the patriarchal family and local markets, heirs of the Medieval courtly tradition, have become modernized and specialized, though they maintain a deep rural connection; this is the matrix of the current appearance of the Italian vineyard, closely linked to ancestral property farmed by pluriactive farmers and or pensioners.

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