Corsica

An island Italian by grape, French by law

No formula sums up the Corsican vineyard better than this one: Italian by grape, French by law. The three varieties that carry most of the island's output — niellucciu, sciaccarellu and vermentino — are all of Italian origin, and two of them keep, under their Corsican name, an identity modern ampelographic science has been able to establish with certainty. Niellucciu is nothing other than Tuscan sangiovese: VIVC lists them under a single passport entry, and Pl@ntGrape, the official French catalogue, is unambiguous — "from Italy (Tuscany), where it is grown under the name Sangiovese". Sciaccarellu, for its part, is identified with mammolo, a minor variety from the Montepulciano area, by converging ampelographic and genetic analysis. Vermentino, finally, carries in Corsica the name vermentinu, in a local usage so constant that this corpus keeps it as a simple synonym rather than a second variety.

Two terroirs, two red varieties, one island

The Corsican vineyard largely comes down to the contrast between two red terroirs. In the north, around the Gulf of Saint-Florent, the limestone and schist of the Nebbiu — a Corsican word meaning "fog" — carry niellucciu almost alone: the Patrimonio appellation's cahier des charges, the first recognised on the island, in 1968, requires a share of at least 90% for red wines. In the west, from the Gulf of Porto down to Sartène, granite dominates, and that is where sciaccarellu finds its ground — a pale-hued, light-tannin variety, the very opposite of the density usually expected of Mediterranean reds. Patrimonio's cahier des charges sums up the symmetry in a single sentence: "nielluccio N is to 'Patrimonio' what sciaccarello N is to 'Ajaccio'".

One wine, one Latin legend

Nothing illustrates the full embrace of this Italian identity better than the French regulatory text itself. Patrimonio's cahier des charges, an administrative document if ever there was one, does not stop at describing an encépagement: it reaches for the metaphor of "sanguis jovis" — the blood of Jove — which the terroir's limestone is said to render "rich and deeply coloured", a direct nod to the scholarly etymology often proposed for the very name "sangiovese". A legal text that quotes Latin to explain a grape variety: the Corsican vineyard hides neither its origins nor its pride in them.

Four appellations, one whole island

Four appellations structure the island vineyard. Patrimonio and Ajaccio, already introduced, each cover a limited territory built around their signature grape and terroir. The regional Vin de Corse appellation, recognised in 1972, spans the whole island, mostly along the coast, from Bastia to Solenzara on the eastern seaboard, and its name may be followed by five geographic denominations — Calvi, Coteaux du Cap Corse, Figari, Porto-Vecchio, Sartène — each with its own nuances of yield and ripeness. Finally, on the narrow Cap Corse peninsula that closes off the island's north, Muscat du Cap Corse carries on a vin doux naturel tradition whose recognition, begun in the early 1960s, only succeeded at the very end of 1997 — a rare wine, made today by a handful of growers, on hillsides so steep and so windswept that they long discouraged any crop but the vine.