Tocco Magliocco

L'Acino,

Unlike many other wine-growing regions of Italy,  which have benefited of  dramatic improvements in the quality of their wines, Calabria has seen few changes.  Until now. A handful of local wine producers have begun replanting vines and working with indegenous varietals, in order  to produce high-quality wines that ,many centuries earlier,  had made this region famous throughout the Mediterraean.
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As early as the VIII century B.C. most of the coastal areas of Calabria were settled by Greeks. They choose to settle in areas ideally suited for planting grapes and their wines were celebrated by the poets of the times. One of these wines was the Krimisa, made with grapes from the Ionion side of today’s Calabria, was offered to the winners of the Olympics that were taking place in Greece every four years.  The Greeks called the area “Enotria”, or Land of Wine. Ancient remains show that the port of Sibari had an authentic “wineduct”, a complex system of stone canals that would easily allow the loading of the wine into the ships leaving  to Greece.

The current history of the wine production in Calabria is less “heroic”.  At the beginning of the 1900’s the phylloxera disease destroyed most of the vineyards. In the following years the region saw a massive population migration and very few new vineyards were replanted. Fortunately, a handful of new and established wine producers recognized the potential of this region and have began producing wines of great quality and personality. One of them is L’Acino, a small winery in San Marco Argentano,  in the province of Cosenza. The winery is lead by three passionate young Calabrians whose mission is to show that the wines of this region can compete and shine on the international wine market.