Casa Setaro "Munazei" Lacryma Christi dei Vesuvio Bianco, Campania, Italy 2022

FROM ROSENTHAL

THE WINE: While Falanghina often makes its way into the final blend of a white Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio, Casa Setaro’s is pure Caprettone—the most adamantly local variety in their zone—planted in the commune of Bosco del Monaco at 250 meters above sea level. Vinified and aged like the Falanghina, with six months in stainless steel on its lees, it showcases the variety’s ability to deliver this zone’s volcanic essence with greater force and more blatant smoke than its peers.

THE PRODUCER: Looming threateningly over the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Mount Vesuvius (or Vesuvio) is the only active volcano in continental Europe, and its immediate surroundings comprise the most densely populated volcanic region in the world, with over 600,000 people living within Vesuvio’s danger zone. Tending the vine in the shadow of an active volcano gives a whole new dimension to the notion of “risk-embracing winemaking,” yet the same ash that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79 nourishes a host of grape varieties, marking them with a forceful and distinctive imprint of terroir.

The wines of Vesuvio have a long and storied history, but local specialties like the dramatically named Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio (“Christ’s Tears on Vesuvius”) have fallen into relative obscurity in recent decades. While southern Italy’s other notable active volcano, Mount Etna in eastern Sicily, has developed a thriving and internationally acclaimed wine scene over the past 15 years, Vesuvio has yet to… explode. Etna, of course, is blessed with a critical mass of highly committed, boundary-pushing winegrowers, whereas on Vesuvio viticulture is dominated by small, relatively disconnected farmers whose wines are commonly geared toward the area’s robust tourist market.

Massimo Setaro is seeking to transform the zone’s reputation and bring the wines of Vesuvio the modern-day recognition he feels they deserve. Heir to the renowned Setaro pasta-making enterprise, fourth-generation Massimo founded Casa Setaro in 2004, beginning with his family’s small pre-phylloxera holdings around their hometown of Trecase on Vesuvio’s southern slopes. Massimo has since planted new parcels, and today the estate totals 12 hectares–notably, of exclusively own-rooted plant material, as this zone’s unforgiving volcanic sand is inhospitable to phylloxera. He works only with indigenous varieties: Piedirosso and Aglianico for his reds; and, while he does grow terrific Fiano and Greco, the characterful and hyper-local Caprettone is what drives his imagination and forms the basis of his most distinctive white wines.