Cantina E Prie di Lorenzo Anfosso (Soldano, LIGURIA)

The Italian Riviera’s Youngest Star.

Known for its tourist-laden beaches, kaleidoscopic pastel towns of “Cinque Terre,” or the straight-out-of-a-Loro-Piana-commercial bay of Portofino, there’s a lot more to Italy’s second-smallest wine region than first meets the eye. Particularly when it comes to the briny, herbaceous red wine of the area– Rossese– or what they call Tibouren across the border in Provence.

Twenty miles before you reach the French border (the town of Ventimiglia, literally “Venti” miles from Provence) you wind up into the hills to find the Medieval village of Dolceacqua. Surrounded by craggy cliffs, whose impossibly steep terraces were built by the Romans, the Rossese di Dolceacqua vineyards here have clung to the rocks for over 25 centuries. What today feels like lost in another era, this magical place used to have over 3,000 hectares planted with vines before phylloxera and has roughly only 90 hectares remaining today.

Few wine producers are willing to sacrifice themselves on these steep hills, and we are thrilled to introduce the youngest new vigneron of Dolceacqua, Lorenzo Anfosso, who was the 7th generation to take over his family’s pre-phylloxera Rossese vines and started making his own wines at age eighteen. Located in Soldano between 250 and 300 meters above sea level, Lorenzo farms just barely one hectare of vines, on jagged marl and schist terraces between two of the best Cru sites of Dolceacqua: “Ai Pini” and “Fulavin.”

Of the few hundred cases that Lorenzo produces, he sets aside a portion of the very oldest parcels at “Ai Pini” to bottle separately, and we were able to get 18 cases from his 2019 vintage.

2022 Rossese di Dolceacqua (pdf tech sheet)

2020 Rossese di Dolceacqua (pdf tech sheet)

2021 Rossese di Dolceacqua “Pini” (pdf tech sheet)

2019 Rossese di Dolceacqua “Pini” (pdf tech sheet)

WARNING: The insanely complex aromas that come out of his ruby red Rossese combine wildflowers, baking spices, and black pepper, and the saline Riviera freshness in his wines makes bottles disappear quickly after opening.