NAPLES -- When you think of Naples, you probably don’t think of wine. You may think of pizza…or even fried pizza. If you are ill-informed, you may think of nothing more than a corrupt, crime-ridden city, calling for secretly sewn pockets to conceal valuables throughout your piumini and pantaloni. What one should think, simply, purely, is life. Naples is alive in a very particularly chaotic sort of way – a beautiful way – likely the cause of the massive concentration of varying cultural influence: from Grecian, to Samnite, to Roman, to Byzantine, to Norman, to Angevin, to Aragonese, even the schizophrenic period of the tyrant from France with the little man complex (i.e. Napoleon), before finally incorporating under the new idea of a unified Italian banner. Naples is a mutt, and what in all creation has a better personality than a mutt? This personality, which has become uniquely Napolitano, also shines through their virtually unknown wines, well deserving of broader acknowledgement and even comparison to some of the world’s greatest wine regions and their related grape varieties. In particular: Catalanesca.

 Catalan-esca. If a little Guitarra de Canya began strumming deep within your eardrums, you are on the right track. “-Esca” is an Italian suffix that implies a “relation,” or more specifically “related to.” So Catalanesca translates to “of, or related to, Catalan.” After conquering Naples on June 2, 1442, Alfonso V, king of Aragon, permanently moved his court to Naples the following year. Along with his court came other Spanish elements that would become permanent elements on the Italian peninsula. One, which thrives in no other location than the slopes of Vesuvius, is the Catalanesca grape. It is also thought that it could have been a renaming of a local grape variety, being that there is no genetic material left in Spain identical to the varietal, but it is doubtful that any Napolitani, or Italiani, would ever accept the permanent renaming of something of their own.

 That said, the Italian culture in general has always been one of adoption – incorporating something completely external, which becomes “Italian.” It is this writer’s presumption that something foreign was eventually adopted as Italian. But this creates more curiosity behind the legend of the grape. The kingdom of Aragon thought highly enough of it to bring along clippings to be planted, and yet it is a varietal that as best as we can determine has become extinct in its “homeland.” After deteriorating situations in the south of Italy, further exacerbated by Naples and Sicily’s incorporation into the larger Kingdom of Italy, Catalanesca was only acknowledged as a lowly table grape – a designation that lasted into at least the early-1980’s. Was this a downgrading by Italians of this foreign transplant? Possibly. As of the early-1990’s a new respect had been found for Catalanesca, and small batches of elegant, briskly refreshing, mineral driven wines began to be spread throughout the small community of Somma Vesuviana.

 This tiny village, in the foothills on the north side of Mount Vesuvius has much of its vineyard land lying within another caldera, called Mount Somma. This explosion is not as famous as the cataclysmic eruption from 79AD, but it has its history and importance. Exploding in 472AD, it lays almost like a plateau on the north side of Vesuvius, and its explosion buried what has been discovered to be the largest wine-making facility in Italy from Roman times. Augustus is thought to have had a villa with such production near the town of Nola (a little east of Somma), but upon this discovery in the 1970’s, along with many of its tell-tale artifacts, it is highly likely that this was the reputed property. Aside from the famous name behind the villa, its mass of production shows the popularity of the wines from the area, and why amphora of Vesuvian wine was found as far away as modern day India, and to the edges of the Empire, near Tragion’s Wall at the modern border between England and Scotland.

 The newly incorporated foreigner (“new” in the grand timeline of things) is showing, along with other relatively recent uplifted varietals of the south, what Italy has to offer, and it this case, more specifically, what elements of refinement lie within the wild, chaotic boundaries of Naples. Much of southern Italy, including the island of Sicily, is characterised by volcanic subsoils, which provide a couple of special elements to the potential of wine grapes planted within their boundaries – primarily drainage and expression. The finest examples show an element of their volcanic source: Cesanese (red) in Lazio; Nerello Mascalese (r), Nerello Cappuccio (r), and Cattaratto (white) in Sicily on Mount Etna; even the powerfully tannic Aglianico of Basilicata can’t hide the subtle volcanic base. The virtually unknown gem of Catalanesca has joined these ranks in its own unique way.

 The grape has been noted for having elements of pineapple or apricot. I have found the wines made from grapes grown at higher elevations from older vines to produce a leaner mineral-driven, delicately floral and fruity wine (think more subtle, muted “yellow” tones – acacia, quince, yellow apple). While Catalanesca is uniquely its own variety, there is a need to draw comparison, and here I come to Chablis, an outlying, northerly district of Burgundy, closer to Champagne in soil and weather patterns, producing lean, mineral-tinged Chardonnays unrivaled anywhere else in the world. Until 2006, Catalanesca maintained its lowly table grape status within the Italian regulatory system, even though producers like Ciro Giordano of Cantina Olivella, had begun in the 1990’s to nurse old vine material into a proper wine-producing frame. The new “wine grape” status leaves much room for growth in what has already been rightly speculated. Look forward to seeing more solid examples of this outsider that has made its home on Vesuvius, as it continues to gain ground and favor among local producers and consumers abroad.