Il Vigneto – Our story

Il Vigneto” is a family run B & B and it is called so, because our family is devoted to the cultivation of the vine, from the 800′s to the present day.
Our vineyards cover about 5,000 square meters on the heights of Volastra, 300 meters above sea level, just above the village of Manarola.
The cultivated land is on sloping hills and nowadays we are maintaining it thanks to the hard work of previous generations who had the ability to exploit this very steep territory by creating terraces supported by the famous typical dry stone walls, built with stones and dirt without any cement.Our vines are supported by the so-called “autedo”, which is a typical pergola made of metal wires.

To give you an idea of the magnificence of our landscape, it is said that if one were to add all the dry walls of the Cinque Terre, their length would be equal to that of the Great Wall of China, s to say 6.350 kilometers!!!
That is the reason why the Cinque Terre have been included in the UNESCO World Heritage.

Our DOC dry white wine is made from 3 different grapes: the 70% is represented by “Bosco”, the 30% by “Arbarola” and the remaining 30% from “Vermentino” and this special mixture gives origin to our typical Cinque Terre wine, as well as the mythical “Sciacchetrà“, a dessert wine made from selected dried grapes.
In addition to the vineyards we are also dedicated to the cultivation of olive trees, producing an excellent extra virgin olive oil.
Formerly the cultivation of the wine was extended over the entire territory of the Cinque Terre as the production and sale of wine represented the only source of livelihood of the families of those places.
Volastra has always played a leading role in the wine production so that the saying of our ancestors was the following: “If you were to break the barrels in the cellars of Volastra, Manarola would be flooded !!!”.
Then, starting from the sixties, there has been a gradual depopulation of the territory, due to the fact that many persons started searching for a job in nearby La Spezia, with a consequent and progressive abandonment of the territory, which nowadays, without the daily work of man, is undergoing a serious hydro-geological impair.
That is why our family is making a daily effort to maintain the terraces and to re-build the spoiled “dry-stone walls”, sure of the act that this is the only solution to protect our beautiful but fragile territory which every year is visited and appreciated by millions of tourists.