I know it’s August and we’re supposed to be on vacation, but I just can’t keep myself out of the vineyards! When I decided, pretty spur of the moment, to escape to a Mediterranean island with crystal clear blue waters, snorkel and mask in hand, I packed the essentials: 4 summer dresses, 3 bikinis, 2 pairs of flip-flops.
Destination: Ponza, a tiny island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the coast between Rome and Naples. And I mean tiny: just a little over 5 miles long and 1.5 miles wide! For some reason, its name kept coming up… that’s when you know the Universe is calling you to visit. Like a Circe’s song (and no coincidence that the nearby promontory is the Circeo National Park), I was lured to visit Ponza, where – believe it or not! – two friends make wine!
This must be the place: sighting the super yacht Opera (the 6th largest in the world) upon my arrival. Almost bigger than Ponza, a good 146 meters (479 feet) long!
Villa Pina – centrally located but away from the madding crowd, as it is perched above the bustling port and waterfront – is small, welcoming, homey, with fresh baked goods every morning and fresh fruit like prickly pears and figs and yellow melon, reminding you that you are in the South, the Mediterranean, and it is August!
Getting down to the serious business of swimming…. Finding empty beaches at Ferragosto always makes my heart skip a beat!
My first evening, I was hosted to a tasting at Antiche Cantine Migliaccio with Donna del Vino Luciana Sabino and her husband Emanuele Vittorio, whose family has owned this land for generations. This wine is heroic in many ways: they send donkeys onto cliffs to bring back the barrels of harvested grapes. The area is called Punta Fieno and they’ve painted the word Utopia in white on a stone there. That they actually make the wine here on the island is nothing short of miraculous! They’ve got all the necessary accouterments: steel tanks, a small bottling machine, a cellar for aging.
Luciana showing folks around the cantina (left), a bottle of Fieno di Ponza, and yours truly examining the color, with her beaded Positano purse on the table!
The native grape variety that’s all the rage on Ponza is Biancolella, and here I got to taste it a few times. This is a heroic gesture, making wine on the steep slopes of this little slip of land.
The other winemaker known for his Biancolella from Ponza is one of the biggest producers in Lazio, Antonio Santarelli of Casale del Giglio. I actually managed to take a walk through the vineyards where the grapes that go into his Faro della Guardia Biancolella grow.
Will you get a load of that cactus? It’s the one that gives us those delicious prickly pears!
The conviviality of raising a glass – this is friendship, this is summer, this is heroic winemaking on a small island. (Also couldn’t resist trying this Albiola rosé!)
I think it’s basically impossible to capture the vibe, no matter how many pictures you take. But just to give you an idea, here’s what I did on my summer vacation:
Swim
Take more pictures of blue, blue waters and swim through grottoes
Admire odd rock formations
Does one ever get tired of romantic sunsets? Hope not!
Grazie Ponza! Grazie to all the warm, wonderful, welcoming Ponzesi people! And… Arrivederci!
Suzanne Branciforte's Italian Grapevine 
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