Cinque Terre Region Culture

Viticulture here is described as heroic, and the word is literal. Plots are measured in rows rather than hectares, nothing mechanised can reach them, and the grapes come down on small monorail tracks laid across the terraces. The dry white is Bosco with Albarola and Vermentino.

Sciacchetrà is the rare one: the same grapes left to dry on racks for months, then pressed, giving a sweet amber wine produced in tiny quantity. A bottle costs what it does because of how little there is.

The other product is anchovies. Monterosso’s are salted and packed in the traditional way and have their own protected recognition; the village holds a festival for them in September and another for its lemons in May.

The colours of the houses are practical rather than decorative in origin — painted so a fisherman could identify his own house from the water — and are now regulated, with the park authority controlling the palette.