This precious passito wine is the pride of the wine-makers of Cinque Terre. The best grapes of the year are set on grates or suspended from the ceiling of the cellar to dry out until the end of October, then pressed to obtain a must that, after fermentation and clarification, is refined in small wooden barrels for at least two years before bottling.
The name Sciacchetrà derives from the local dialect word sciaccâ, that means “to crush”, or from the archaic Middle Eastern term shekar, that designated alcoholic beverages, an interpretation made plausible by the intense wine trading between Liguria and the Middle East in ancient times. However, this name was introduced at the end of the 18th century: until then, the sweet wine produced in the area was generally called vin duse, sweet wine, or renfurzà, reinforced. Its production being scarce and a very hard task, the precious bottles of Sciacchetrà were opened to celebrate family events or offered as a gift to respected and important relations. Today it is considered a “meditation wine”, but its rich and deep flavours, of dry fig and apricot, and its complex and never excessive sweetness, harmonized as it is by the memory of the sea, must be savoured with full awareness of the hard work involved in its making.