Cantina Cheo - Vernazza

The Cheo vineyards ascend the hills surrounding Vernazza, divided into 70 terraces located in the most suitable areas for viticulture: Fossà, Croci, Lamma, Contra, Mavà, and Vernazzola, with altitudes ranging from 30 to 150 meters above sea level. While Vernazzola is situated inland, the other vineyards overlook the sea, amidst a landscape of agaves, oaks, prickly pears, heathers, myrtle, alaterno, and giant euphorbias.

The total area of the estate is approximately 2.5 hectares, with 2.0 hectares dedicated to vineyards and the remainder allocated to olive groves and woodland. To overcome the challenges associated with traditional pergola training, which diminishes its advantages, a trellis system has been adopted, utilizing a simple Guyot training method with 6,000 plants per hectare, yielding between 1 and 1.5 kilograms of grapes per plant (5 to 7 clusters).
Following planting, no further soil cultivation is performed, allowing the ground to remain covered with grass from September to May.

SERVICES

Wine tasting
Wine sale 

Website Cantina Cheo

Cantina Cappellini - Volastra

At Cantina Capellini, wine is produced with the same patience and dedication passed down through generations, blending traditional techniques with modern advancements in viticulture and winemaking.

The winery has recently undergone a gradual digital transformation, implementing small yet effective changes while remaining true to its core values.
Additionally, the dream of creating a wine tasting space directly in the vineyards overlooking the sea has been realized, offering a special venue where travelers and wine enthusiasts can gather to savor and appreciate the family's products. Perched on a hill above Manarola at approximately 330 meters above sea level, Volastra is a village deeply intertwined with the landscape of the Cinque Terre. Surrounded by vineyards, Volastra has played a crucial role in shaping this region.

SERVICES

Wine tasting
Free parking
Wine sale
Pet friendly
Weddings

Website Cantina Capellini

Cantina Sassarini - Monterosso al Mare

Terre that has been absent until now. This is a region buffeted by sea winds, basking in summer sunlight, perched and nearly isolated, arid and rugged, yet fertile when nurtured and supported, characterized by kilometers of dry stone walls.
These walls, stacked one upon another, resemble the tower houses, extending from the sea to the edge of the sky, akin to ancient sculptures. Sun-baked stones, heated by the summer sun, serve as homes for serpents and guardians of the vineyards, lemons, and olive trees. These walls delineate gardens and measure the steps of those who tend to them.

They are precarious, crumbling structures that uphold a unique landscape, marking the terrain with infinite lines, stone walls that narrate the history of the Cinque Terre. It is here that wine is born, and the vineyards thrive. The varieties of Bosco, Albarola, and Vermentino flourish in this challenging environment, with a thousand steps leading from the sea and another thousand ascending from the hilltops.

The village boasts breathtaking views, from the sky to the sea, and is surrounded by vineyards supported by legendary dry stone walls. This unique landscape, recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 and designated as a National Park in 1999, provides the perfect backdrop for the Capellini family's viticultural endeavors. 


SERVICES

Wine tasting
Free parking
Wine sale

Website Cantina Sassarini

Stella di Lemmen - Riomaggiore

Given that Stella di Lemmen had to commence from scratch, it has chosen to adhere to the principles of biodynamic agriculture and to restore traditional local white wine varieties, including Vermentino, Bosco, and Albarola. The vineyard, often covered in grass and enriched by cover crops, is treated exclusively with natural pesticides and is surrounded by various other plantations where families of bees and chickens roam freely, creating a multifunctional agricultural ecosystem.

SERVICES

Wine tasting
Free parking
Wine sale

Website Stella di Lemmen

A complimentary gadget to enhance your wine tasting experience

The Wheel The Perfumes of Wine and The Wheel of Wine Tasting are two of the most successful articles of the Alter-Eno® production, conceived, created and registered by Pierpaolo Paradisi (co-founder of this website) first in 2005 and then in 2023.
They were distributed in New York in 2007 during an international event which saw the participation of companies of the caliber of Poggio Argentiera (Tuscany), in the five best Italian restaurants in Manhattan, including the famous Le Cirque.
Used by Andrea Gori of the Da Burde restaurant in Florence open since 1901, second Best Sommelier in Europe WSA in 2008 and by various renowned wineries in Veneto, Tuscany and Sardinia.

For Alter-Eno®, creating articles that would otherwise be unobtainable has always been an institutional challenge.
A test of sublime skill that he faced with extraordinary creations.
Who make frivolity a very disciplined art.

Donated by Alter-Eno® to Azienda Agricola Sentiero Azzurro, it is at disposal to visitors to this website.
Reproduction to commercial use, even partial, is strictly prohibited.

Click on the picture below to enlarge or download

Reflections on Wine Tasting

We know that there are external experiences and internal experiences or, in other words, experiences that can be "communicated" and experiences that cannot, because they constitute a "memory of the body."
The experience of tasting is given by the body.

It is impossible to "tell" about a wine to someone who has never tasted that wine. Yet, there are continuous attempts to do so in specialized magazines, guides, on the web.

The impossibility of narrating the tasting experience is due to the fact that during tasting, the wine is divided into fragments, into separate objects.
They possess an independent existence. It is our senses that bring them to life.
Of course, the wine we are tasting can be translated into "discourse"; it can be defined in terms of nature, physics, or chemistry, or in the tone of intimate confessions.
However, that particular wine, as "discourse," is different from the experience the body has of it.

The experience of tasting can be described, but it is not the same as the "knowledge" of that experience.
This latter knowledge is indeed internal, communicated by the senses through the body.
A body infused with the senses that wine can evoke is a combination of flavors, aromas, sensations, suggestions, and memories.

At this moment, I am trying to convert all of this into speech, but I know that there exists an entire unexpressed dimension.
Knowledge is reduced to the body, but it is also something more than the body.

In other words, the outer experience and the inner experience are separate.
One can be communicated along the boundary of speech; the other we convert into speech but know that it is a coded memory "inside" the body.
It is impossible to separate this latter kind of memory from oneself.
Only that which can be detached from oneself is describable.

The senses, moreover, are limited: they do not embrace the entire personality of the wine.
Touch inevitably fragments, deconstructs. Just as a body that is experienced through touch is never an entity, but only the sum of existing fragments side by side, that do not create a form, are not a structure, … so is the wine, or the food.
For this reason, sight, taste, and smell, like touch, become fragmentary senses during tasting.
They focus on a fragment of the wine: on its fluidity, color, flavor, etc.

The wine is offered to us from different perspectives, from unusual angles, in close-ups that magnify.

It seems that the wine is being dissected, almost reduced to atoms, dispersed, touched from within in its viscosity and dryness, humidity, roughness, and temperature.
Our senses highlight its structure, penetrating to the skeleton, bringing it forth from non-existence and delivering it to the senses and consciousness of the taster.

So far, wine was just a liquid; now it begins to exist. In other words, the senses become a dissection that gives life, but even in this case, the wine retains its fragmented structure and does not create a personality, or at least it creates one that is entirely different.

During tasting, wine is turned inside out like a glove and is experienced from within. The function of language in the tasting experience is also transformed. Language returns to its roots; sometimes it is inarticulate, an onomatopoeic sound, as if only then does the learning of names and things begin. Or it is articulated, and its function is close to magic, causing the existence of a thing or an action simply by naming them.

Tasting is therefore always a cognitive act: the wine is dissected, and the senses constantly control each other: sight is assigned some functions of touch, just as taste does with smell, and vice versa. It is as if the existence of wine is continuously questioned and requires constant demonstration.
This proof's ultimate and final instance is represented by the body of that particular taster.

But the paradoxical and sad aspect of tasting lies in the fact that its absolute realization is impossible. The proof is possible only during the act itself.

The moment the tasting ends, the taster and the wine return to being separate. They must be subjected to proof again. And the proof is possible only during the act itself, appealing once more to the body.

Because the body is an essence, the only essence. And this, as in the case of love, is perhaps the reason for the failure of that experience of the body that we call "tasting."

Pierpaolo Paradisi