Category_Magazine>Curiosità sul mondo del vino

Can wine be produced in the city?

Viti metropolitane

There are contexts that openly challenge the concept of a vineyard in the countryside. Why yes: it is possible to produce wine in the city.

The vineyards that are within the metropolitan borders have ancient histories.
Resisting urbanization (thanks to the stubbornness of individuals or with the support of enlightened administrations), they offer oxygen to cities, maintain biodiversity, are a source of colours, scents and silence.

City vines are real lungs to be protected.

They tell stories of landscape protection and the value of rurality. A real gem that also translates into a precious tourist resource and economic revival .

These are the foundations that pushed the establishment of a European network of city vineyards. The aim is precisely the promotion of this heritage, not only from a production point of view - focusing on quality - but also from a tourist point of view, because contemporary culture rewards the stories of wine .

They are, in essence, the same objectives that animate the Festival of Metropolitan Vineyards of Naples. The Neapolitan city, in fact, is the first in Italy for hectares of vineyards within the urban boundaries , and these are also vineyards that are not affected by phylloxera (therefore cultivated ungrafted).

As our friend, the sommelier Cristian Chieregati writes :

"This winemaking heritage makes the Neapolitan vineyard unique in the world, where winemakers compete to work there and thus discover and develop wines that would be impossible to produce elsewhere. "

But which are the cities in Italy with the greatest number of metropolitan vineyards?

In addition to Naples , which is the first, Turin , Brescia , Venice , Rome , Siena ...
The latter, among other things, still has very rare ungrafted vines in the various small vegetable gardens that characterize its historic center; these are vineyards preserved until today because historically they were mainly intended for self-consumption.

At a European level, the first city for hectares of vineyards is Vienna , the second Naples and the third Paris , with its Clos-Montmartre vineyard, at the foot of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, restored in the 1930s thanks to the stubbornness of a group of artists.

Each with a different history, city vineyards are also present in London (in Enfield), New York (in Queens), Los Angeles , Prague , Thessaloniki , San Francisco ...

What are the consequences of growing vines in the city?

It is clear that choosing to grow vines in the city, or close to it, is a choice that goes against the trend, which entails reduced extensions of the vineyard. The other side of the coin is made up of the environmental impact of these vineyards - impact which must be low - and therefore of the cultivation techniques used, which precisely due to their proximity to inhabited areas must avoid invasive treatments , as Carlo told us, of Terre del Lagorai .

In our selections we also offer metropolitan wines , made by winemakers who grow in the urban area of ​​Naples in a context of incomparable beauty .

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