The land is rich and salty: tuff, lava, potassium, phosphorus, iron; in some estates it is possible to see waves of brown lava even several meters long, fossilized, coming out of the earth, and perhaps acting as a walkway towards the panoramic terraces overlooking the big city.
In this area, even in the summer nights, the temperature drops and a fresh wind rises; in this way the aromatic endowment and the elegant scents of the plant varieties that grow here abundantly are preserved. These are the Castelli Romani; here the blaze of the Roman sunset seems far away but if the vineyard is well exposed will still manage to change the colour of the surroundings blending the greenish patches of the hilly woods and the small perched villages.
It can almost be said that here, as elsewhere, it was the wine that made the man rather than the other way around; certainly, in more recent times, it saved men,when widespread poverty, wars and swamps had segregated these peasants to spend their lives hunched over the ridges, trying to earn brad and accompaniment out of the vines.
La Torretta's terroir
Our vineyards are located just under Grottaferrata, around 300 metres above sea level and our terroir is a volcanic soil composed by the Valle Marciana tuff, an ancient stratified gray tuff formed in the numerous eruptions in the area outside the big volcano Latium Volcano which most visible end today is Monte Cavo clearly visible above Marino.
Volcanic geology
La Torretta vineyard is located on a small part of Valle Marciana tuff defined in the geolocal map of Rome. It is a light gray ancient tuff arranged in layers, distinguishable above all by the different shades of their gray colour. The tuff contains numerous projectiles whose dimensions vary from a few millimeters to over half a metre, the projectiles consist of both different types of lava and tufo and sedimentary rocks for instance limestone, marly limestone, marl and arenaceous marl.For its straigraphic position, the Valle Marciana tuff is superimposed on the Villa Senni tuff formation and below the Albano. In our wine cave it is possible to see all its characteristics.
Grapes varieties
Walking through the vineyards, on the land dotted with light tuff, you can see the beautiful grapes of Bonvino, that elsewhere it is called Trebbiano d’Abruzzo, and of Bellone Velletrano and the smaller of Grechetto. Then the long and loose one of Malvasia di Candia, shelled towards the earth, the golden cones of Malvasia Puntinata with round and freckeled berries; and the bunch of Trebbiano Giallo dei Castelli with dull fruits and large, wrinkled leaves like an old mother.
All around, hidden, there must be some other forgotten plant; many people have told us that they have found one, two, three isolated vines of these forgotten plants after having taken over a farm or a farmhouse: the Arciprete, the Pecorino, the Greco Giallo, the Greco Moro, the Trebbiano Verde, memories of a heritage that before phylloxera numbered two hundred varieties, as many as other regions in Italy.
Thanks
We would like to thank the people we met along the way who made us embark on this project, as well as our past and our ancestors who made it possible for us to be the people we are today. A general thanks to the beauty of life, to be alive and for the gift of life. We are grateful to have known and to be able to continue studying biodiversity, the spiritual side of man and the search for meaning of being alive here today. We are also privileged to have received help from passionate colleagues.
