It has been a full 40,000 years since Mount Vulture last spewed lava, but the effects of that last eruption are firmly felt there now. Elena Fucci’s grandfather bought vines located 600 meters up this... Read More

It has been a full 40,000 years since Mount Vulture last spewed lava, but the effects of that last eruption are firmly felt there now. Elena Fucci’s grandfather bought vines located 600 meters up this mountain in 1960, just a few hundred meters from where it actually erupted. The vines he bought there – just 10 years old at the time – were rooted in the dark, porous soils left behind by a lava flow called Titolo. The vines were still young, but as vines in volcanic soils get older they tend to dig deep, sucking up mineral complexity from the earth below.

By 2000 those vines were around 50 years old. It was time for Grandpa to retire. The Fucci's hadn't really been making much wine from those vines – just enough for themselves to drink. They sold the rest of the grapes off in bulk. But Elena and her dad Salvatore thought, maybe we could make great wines from these vines?

The logic was sound. Those vines were Aglianico, a noble grape. They were now definitely old vines with deep roots. And the location was unusually cool for this far south in Italy — thanks to winds and high altitude — so the grapes are not harvested until late October, just like in the most northerly wine regions of Europe. The Titolo vineyard is, therefore, very special – considered the grandest of the Grand Crus of Basilicata.

So Salvatore and Elena set out to make wines, and they turned out to be very great indeed. So great, that Ian d'Agata in Vinous recently wrote: “Simply put, Elena Fucci is one of Italy’s finest red wine producers and has been at the top of the country’s quality pyramid."

One of Fucci’s secrets is focus: they make just one wine, every vintage, from this same Titolo plot (occasionally they bottle the same wine as a riserva in magnums).