Corisca Wine Travel Guide: Where to Eat, Drink, and Stay

After the Jeep had crawled up the steep, rocky slope, above a valley planted with vineyards and filled with birdsong, Antoine Arena pulled the hand brake and turned off the motor. “These vines are like a family tree,” he said. “Some were planted by my grandfather, some by my father, some by me, and now, some by my sons.”

我们沉默地坐了一分钟，欣赏了景色和微风，这是由马奎斯（Maquis）闻到了覆盖科西嘉岛大部分地区的野生灌木丛。这种香水不断发展，狂野的薄荷，百里香，迷迭香和黄色开花扫帚的蜂蜜花束，在这个春末下午点燃了绿色山腰。

科西嘉岛,躺好东南约150英里nd roughly three times the size of Rhode Island, is one of the most stunning places in the Mediterranean (in France, it’s rightly known as L’Île de Beauté, the beautiful island). Its wild magnificence is explained in large part by the ferocious love its inhabitants have for their island: Most of them identify as Corsicans first and French second, and they have zealously protected their home from being spoiled by mass tourism. And, as I learned during a recent road trip that began with Arena’s vineyards in Patrimonio in the north and ended near Figari some 100-plus miles to the south, the island is now producing some of the best and most distinctive wines made anywhere in France.

“You know, I nearly broke my father’s heart,” said Arena, a gregarious, ursine man in his 60s who threw over studying for a law degree in Paris in 1975 to return to Patrimonio, the northern Corsican town where he was born, to take over Domaine Antoine Arena, his family’s vineyard. “He didn’t want me to be a peasant. But I couldn’t imagine a greater happiness than making wine from the grapes that grow in these vineyards.” Today, Antoine’s sons, Jean-Baptiste and Antoine-Marie, work alongside him. “And our wines in Corsica have become very good,” he added sheepishly.

His remark shot me back to a rainy night in 1986 when I’d just moved to Paris. On my way home, I would stop in the local grocery for a bottle of wine. It was a simple store with a small selection, but the ones that interested me the most were those on the bottom shelf (the cheap ones). That night, I noticed a bottle of Corsican wine down there. At the register, the proprietor grunted when he saw what I was buying.“Ouf! Les vins Corses ne sont pas terrible.”(科西嘉葡萄酒不太好亚搏电竞。)后来我才知道he wasn’t the only one with this opinion. The famously bibulous Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “We had a Corsican wine that had great authority and a low price. It was a very Corsican wine, and you could dilute it by half with water and still receive its message.” As it turned out, that red wine I bought was from Ajaccio, the city on Corsica’s western coast where Napoleon was born. It was perfectly pleasant with an omelet.

Arena laughed when I told him that story. “There’s been a real revolution here since then,” he said. He should know: Arena is one of the godfathers of a remarkable transformation among Corsican winemakers, who are embracing organic and biodynamic farming for their vineyards and doubling down on quality. As Arena put it, “What’s happened is that we rediscovered the value of our island’s terroir.”

科西嘉岛本质上是海洋中的一座大山，有大陆和海上气候，各种土壤 - 北部的高中和粘土，岛中心的砂岩和火山岩和火山土壤，南方的许多花岗岩 - 比40种土著葡萄。Arena说：“这就是解释我们葡萄酒的非凡品种和质量的原因。”亚搏电竞离开他的庄园后，我在岛上的九个称呼中度过了四次旅行，探索了多样性，交替访问最喜欢的酿酒师，并发现了新的酿酒厂。亚搏电竞

The fresh, delicate wines of winemaker Camille-Anaïs Raoust at Domaine Maestracci in the Calvi AOC, on the northwestern coast of the island, for instance, were one superb new find. They also revealed that a new generation of Corsican winemakers are now taking the work of pioneering elders like Arena to even greater heights.

In 2014, Raoust shifted her family’s estate to biodynamic farming, which eschews the use of pesticides and chemicals in favor of a sort of agricultural homeopathy. “My father initially told me I was crazy, but this year, he came to me and said, ‘It was a good idea, my daughter.’ I think that what convinced him was that our wines are much livelier now than in the past and also have a certain equilibrium they didn’t have before.” A perfect expression of Raoust’s style is her Les Marottes d’Anaïs, a red made entirely from the local Sciacarellu and Niellucciu varieties that’s fresh, fruity, and balanced.

At the end of the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Domaine Maestracci to Ajaccio, I celebrated with a bottle of Clos d’Alzeto Moretelle over a dinner of roast squid and octopus and organic Corsican veal steak at A Nepita, where British chef Simon Andrews does superb contemporary Corsican cooking. The bottle was expensive, but my excuse was that this stunningly elegant white rivals some of the greatest Burgundies, it’s not available in the United States, and it’s difficult to find even in France. It’s one of those exciting delicacies you have to travel for to enjoy, and so I did. Made from handpicked Biancu Gentile and Vermentino grapes, the wine has an intriguingly complex nose (yellow flowers, exotic tropical scents) and a mineral-rich density on the palate that makes it a superb food wine, and I wanted to learn more about it.

The next day, the spectacular views from the sinuous road that led to the Clos d’Alzeto winery were almost dangerously distracting. This fifth-generation winery was founded in 1800 and is run today by Pascal Albertini and his three children. Albertini and I toured the estate’s natural amphitheater, where the vines are often planted in terraces, the azure blue of the Mediterranean Sea glinting on the horizon. “We’re lucky to have a variety of soils on our farm,” Albertini said. “This allows us to produce a variety of very different wines, but what all of them have in common is that there’s always a little bit of le maquis in the nose of every bottle.”

从闭合的阿尔泽托（D'Alzeto），我向南前往南部的列维（Levie）村庄，栖息在茂密的森林中的河谷上方，再到一个由de Rocca serra家族经营的Auberge的Pignata（Corsican的“烹饪锅”）。它的餐厅是Anne-Sophie Pic和PierreHermé等厨师的最爱，为传统的Corsican家庭烹饪提供服务。我被咆哮的大火定居下来，我被菜单困扰着 - 我想要一切。最终，我选择了汤汤（Charcuterie）盘子，这是一个艰难的呼唤，因为科西嘉·熟食是世界上最好的，而de rocca serrras则是自己的。然后我抖动。烤肉羊肉或科西嘉·陶伯（Corsican Daube），有点像蘑菇酱中的肉饼，annelloni的一面吗？最后，与父亲一起经营饭厅的安托万·德·罗卡·塞拉（Antoine de Rocca Serra）说：“我会为你决定。”

I was sipping a suave local red when Antoine’s brother Jean-Baptiste, who runs the kitchen with his mother, arrived at my table with two casseroles. “I decided you should try both,” he said with a grin. They were excellent, and after two types of Corsican cheese and hot, sugar–dusted beignets doused with some locally made eau de vie, I had a supremely good night’s sleep.

After this blissful time-out, I headed south to the village of Tarrabucceta near Figari, the home of Yves Canarelli. Originally trained as an economist, in 1993 he took over Clos Canarelli, his family’s vineyard estate, where he champions indigenous Corsican grapes, traditional winemaking methods like aging in amphorae, and biodynamic farming. “Biodynamic farming, or the use of exclusively natural products in accordance with the cycles of the sun and the moon, sounds eccentric until you understand it. By identifying why the vines are unhappy, you can help them work better,” he said, explaining that he often uses homemade tinctures to treat them. “For example, a concoction of nettles soaked in water stimulates the plants.”

Canarelli says his goal is to produce wines that have the finesse of great Burgundies but a distinct Corsican signature. To accomplish this, he uses only indigenous yeasts and prefers slow, precise fermentations. He also leaves his reds unfiltered.

“I am guided by the centuries of peasant wisdom that accumulated before the rise of industrial winemaking,” said Canarelli. “The ancients knew what they were doing,” he added with a grin. In Corsican wines today, the future is the past.

在Corsica的40多种本地葡萄中，红酒最重要的是质朴的Niellucciu，它与Tuscany的Sangiovese有关，Sciacarell亚搏电竞u是一种优雅的品种Sciacarellu，其高酸度使其对衰老的良好良好。Vermentino（当地称为Vermentinu）可能是由希腊的腓尼基人带到岛上的，他们于公元前570年建立定居点。并且是大多数白人使用的葡萄。现在大约有三分之一的科西嘉岛葡萄园被种植在尼鲁库库（Niellucciu）中，而sciacarellu和Vermentino则占用15％。

下面的酿酒厂的许多葡萄酒亚搏电竞都是由科西嘉葡萄酒的早期冠军Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant进口的。

西部海岸Ajaccio地区Clos D'Alzeto是岛上最适合旅亚搏电竞游的酒庄之一，也生产出巨大的橄榄油。他们的Moretelle值得一游。closdalzeto.com

让·查尔斯·阿巴图奇（Jean-Charles Abbatucci）的酿酒厂在西海岸的阿贾奇奥（Ajaccio）附近，赢亚搏电竞得了该岛土著葡萄制成的葡萄酒，这是一代人。domaine-abbatucci.com

Antoine Arena makes soulful, biodynamically farmed wines at this benchmark estate.(33-04-95-37-08-27)

前往岛上西北海岸的卡尔维称呼，品尝酿酒师Camille-AnaïsRaoust的新鲜，精致和独特的葡萄酒。亚搏电竞domaine-maestracci.com

Marc Imbert’s 100-acre organic estate near Porto-Vecchio in southern Corsica is producing some of the island’s greatest red wines.domaine-de-torraccia.com

Tarrabucceta的Yves Canarelli可能是当今科西嘉岛最有远见的酿酒师。亚搏电竞33-04-95-71-07-55

At night, sleep in a restored shepherd’s cottage on 6,100 acres. During the day, fish, take nature walks, lie on the beach, or dine at three restaurants, including one run by Mathieu Pacaud, son of chef Bernard Pacaud of L’Ambroisie in Paris.murtoli.com

This pleasant seaside hotel, with a pool and sandy beach on the edge of the stylish old fishing port of Saint-Florent, is a good base from which to explore the Patrimonio vineyards.hoteldelaroya.com

Chef Yann Le Scavarec highlights local produce in dishes like tuna tataki with ponzu and pasta with crabmeat; there’s also a superb wine list.餐厅 - 弗林洛伦斯坦餐厅

This spot features contemporary Corsican cooking and sidewalk tables in warm weather.33-04-95-26-75-68

这座迷人的，粉红色的19世纪别墅有一家餐厅，俯瞰着Ajaccio湾，值得一游。hotellesmouettes.fr

这种质朴的家族拥有的Auberge提供了出色的传统Corsican烹饪。apignata.com