The Henry David Thoreau of Liguria

The story of Azienda Agricola Possa begins with a choice. In 2004, Samuele Heydi Bonanini — known to everyone in Riomaggiore simply as Heydi — founded his estate in the Possaitara valley, a steep amphitheatre of stone and vine that rises above the village toward the ridge connecting Riomaggiore to the sea. He had inherited or acquired roughly 14,000 square metres of terraced land, some of it abandoned, some of it still clinging to ancient vines that had survived decades of neglect. The first decision he had to take was whether to follow market demand or to follow the identity of the territory. He did not hesitate. He chose the second.

Heydi is not merely a vigneron; he is a culture keeper — a guardian of what we are losing. The Cinque Terre, despite its fame as a tourist destination, has seen its agricultural heart eroded by emigration, by the impossibility of mechanised farming on slopes too steep for tractors, and by a global market that prefers familiar varieties to local ones. Heydi confronted this decline directly. He studied and recovered different autochthonous varieties that had almost disappeared — not only the three pillars of the Cinque Terre DOC (Bosco, Albarola, and Vermentino), but also Rossese Bianco, Canaiolo Nero, Bonamico, Picabon, and Moscato Rosso. He planted them on terraces that had to be rebuilt stone by stone, wall by wall, using the same dry-stone techniques that created this landscape over a thousand years.

The work is heroic in the truest sense. Bureaucratic complications, narrow spaces, and vertiginous slopes mean that no machines can access the vineyards. Everything — planting, pruning, hoeing, harvesting — is done by hand. The grapes are carried down from the terraces on the vigneron's shoulder, along paths that wind between dry-stone walls with the Mediterranean glittering hundreds of metres below. When it rains, Heydi prefers to stay alone amongst the stones and the vines, finding shelter in a self-constructed stone hut built into the terrace. Rain? So what. There is always work to be done: for the grapes, for the bees, for the terraces, for the dry-stone walls that hold the mountain together.

The estate is not merely a winery. Apart from the vineyards, the farm is involved in beekeeping — Heydi is an award-winning beekeeper — and the production of integral honey from hives placed among the vines. There is a small plantation of lemon trees used for limoncello and jams. There is an ancient passito made from red grapes, and an infusion in local peach leaves that revives a monastic tradition of the Ligurian hills. Heydi is known to everyone in Riomaggiore. Walk up or down the main street with him, and you will hear shout-outs from passers-by: "Heddie! Ciao!" He is the Mayor in absentia — frequently at his real home, the vineyard. As one American importer wrote: he is not like he walks the walk; he IS the walk. The Henry David Thoreau of Liguria.

The winemaking philosophy at Azienda Agricola Possa is governed by an uncompromising fidelity to territory. When Heydi built his cellar, he made a deliberate choice that distinguishes him from most modern Italian winemakers: he re-proposed the use of wood — not the standard French oak or Slovenian durmast that dominates cellars from Piedmont to Sicily, but the woods of local tradition. Acacia, chestnut, and cherry. These are the trees that grow on the Ligurian hills, and their wood imparts flavours that belong to this place — subtle tannins, resinous notes, and a texture that evokes the forest rather than the cooperage. The use of local wood is not a gimmick; it is a statement that the wine should be made from materials that share the same terroir as the grapes.

Alongside the local wood, Heydi employs amphorae — clay vessels that allow for skin-contact maceration and oxidative ageing without the aromatic imprint of oak or the sterility of steel. The amphorae are used for both white wines and the legendary Sciacchetrà, creating textures and complexities that are virtually unheard of in the Cinque Terre. Stainless steel is also present, used for freshness and precision in the younger wines. The cellar is simple, almost austere: a combination of up-to-the-minute technology and keeping things simple at the same time, as one visitor described it. Steam is used for sanitation. Cleanliness is paramount. But intervention is minimal.

Fermentations occur spontaneously, with indigenous yeasts. Heydi harvests his grapes just a little early, allowing him to produce wine with less alcohol and to show the true influence of the ground and the environment on the grapes. The whites are often given light skin contact — a few days to a few weeks — to extract structure and depth without losing freshness. The reds are handled gently, preserving the delicate, almost floral character of Canaiolo Nero and Bonamico. There is no filtration, no fining with animal products or chemical agents. The wines are allowed to express their most true nature, as forcefully as possible, with a clarity that is natural rather than manufactured.

The result is a portfolio of wines that are unmistakably Cinque Terre: saline, sun-drenched, and shaped by stone. Each wine has its own voice and range, timbre and colour — as one taster noted, like a singer making wines that sing. The Bosco provides structure and savoury depth. The Albarola gives freshness and apple-like clarity. The Vermentino contributes citrus and herbal notes. The Rossese Bianco adds aromatic complexity. And the reds — Canaiolo Nero and Bonamico — offer a rare glimpse into the pre-modern Cinque Terre, when red wines were as common as whites on these terraces. The Sciacchetrà, made from dried grapes and foot-pressed berry by berry, is the culmination of the estate's philosophy: patience, tradition, and absolute respect for the raw material.

To understand Azienda Agricola Possa, one must understand the concept of the culture keeper — a viticultural identity that is almost impossible to sustain in an era of rural depopulation, tourist monoculture, and global market pressure. Samuele Heydi Bonanini is not merely a vigneron; he is a guardian of what we are losing. The Cinque Terre, for all its postcard beauty, is a landscape in crisis. The terraces that took a thousand years to build are crumbling. The young people have left for Genoa and Milan. The old people who remember how to build a dry-stone wall are dying. And the global wine market, with its demand for familiar varieties and consistent styles, has no use for a place that produces a few hundred cases of unfiltered wine from grapes no one has heard of. Heydi confronts this crisis not with nostalgia but with labour — daily, back-breaking, hand-breaking labour on slopes that would defeat most farmers before noon.

The heroic vigneron identity that Heydi embodies is equally central. Heroic viticulture is an official Italian classification for vineyards on steep slopes where mechanisation is impossible and manual labour is the only option. But at Possa, heroism is not a classification; it is a way of life. Heydi carries his grapes down the mountain on his shoulder. He rebuilds dry-stone walls that have stood since the year 500. He sleeps in a stone hut when the rain makes the path too dangerous to descend. He harvests early, accepting lower alcohol and less marketable power, because he believes that the true voice of the Cinque Terre is heard only in wines of freshness, acidity, and restraint. He does not filter because filtering would lie. He does not use French oak because French oak would lie. He uses acacia, chestnut, and cherry because they grow here. He is not merely making wine; he is making an argument — for the possibility of agriculture as cultural preservation, for the viability of natural wine in impossible places, and for the continuity of a landscape that would otherwise disappear into bramble and landslide.

The future of Azienda Agricola Possa is tied to the deepening of Heydi's relationship with his terraces — the continued organic and biodynamic cultivation of the Possaitara valley, the rebuilding of abandoned walls, the recovery of additional indigenous varieties, the refinement of his amphora and local-wood vinification, and the strengthening of his position in the natural wine markets of Italy, Europe, and beyond. The estate will remain tiny, family-run, and defiantly local — the Cinque Terre Bianco will continue to express the classic, saline identity of the territory; the Sciacchetrà will continue to carry the banner of the planetary treasure; the Vin dei Vecci will continue to remind the world that the Cinque Terre once made reds; and the honey, the limoncello, and the peach leaf infusion will continue to demonstrate that a farm is more than a winery.

In an age of industrial wine production, of chemical agriculture and homogenised taste, Azienda Agricola Possa stands as a compelling alternative — not because it rejects the Cinque Terre but because it has embraced a different Cinque Terre, one that values indigenous varieties over international grapes, hand labour over mechanisation, local wood over French oak, amphora over barrique, early harvest over alcohol accumulation, bees over pesticides, stone huts over climate-controlled cellars, and the specific voice of the Possaitara valley over the standardised replication of a global style. Samuele Heydi Bonanini is not merely making wine; he is holding up a mountain — one terrace, one wall, one vine, one bee, one shout of "Heddie!" at a time. The 2004 founding, the recovered varieties, the local woods, the foot-pressed Sciacchetrà, the stone hut in the rain, the award-winning honey, the peach leaf infusion, and the name that has meant natural Cinque Terre for two decades: all united in one bottle, one estate, one unanswerable argument for the possibility of authentic, place-specific, heritage-rooted, heroically evolving artisan wine on the cliffs above the Ligurian Sea.