The Island Cave Keepers: A Hill With No Road, a Tufa Cave & Wine Made Like the Greeks
On a lush hill above Barano d'Ischia, at 350 metres with no road access and a view across the Gulf of Naples, siblings Anna and Gennaro Manna farm one of the last intact witnesses of Ischia's ancient peasant tradition: three hectares of terraces, dry-stone parracine walls, chestnut woods, vegetable gardens, fruit trees — and one hectare of Biancolella and Falanghina vines. The wine is made in an ancient cave hand-dug into the tufa, fermented spontaneously in Georgian qvevri, terracotta amphorae and Spanish tinajas, macerated up to six months under sealed granite lids, and bottled by hand in the cave itself. Five thousand bottles a year, wearing labels their uncle Erasmo hand-drew as island postcards in the 1970s.
Origin — The Farmer Who Uprooted His Own Vineyard
Gennaro Manna's passion for agriculture is, by his own suppliers' account, disruptive. A farmer by vocation rather than inheritance, he began farming family land at Forio in 2010 with the intention of the most natural agriculture possible — and believed in it so much that he uprooted a small family vineyard, convinced that vines could not be grown and wine made without chemicals. He devoted himself to vegetables: native island varieties like the zampognaro bean and the tondino cherry tomato.
In 2015 his sister Anna also chose a life in contact with nature, leaving a business career, and in 2016 the two siblings acquired the Società Agricola IschiaBio — owner of Tenuta del Cannavale, a three-hectare estate on a hill in Barano d'Ischia. The estate already held a young vineyard, which the siblings expanded in 2020; the man who once uprooted vines had found the place where vines could be grown his way.
The turn in the cellar came after a course at Carlo Noro's on biodynamic agriculture and preparations, and the beginning of a collaboration with oenologist Michele Lorenzetti, a guide chosen for his enormous experience with amphora vinification. The estate has been certified organic since 2011 and has used biodynamic preparations since 2016; since 2018 it has been registered in the Campania region's register of Educational Farms, teaching the next generation what the hill teaches them.
The Place — Terraces Above the Gulf of Naples
The estate lies on a mid-hill at about 350 metres, with no vehicular access, outside all inhabited centres, surrounded by chestnut and oak woods, facing east to north-east over the Gulf of Naples. The volcanic land is arranged in terraces held by parracine — dry-stone walls of local lava stone — with a sandy, lapilli-rich surface over clay at 30–40 centimetres that retains water for the unirrigated vines. The soil is never turned: a small tractor skims the surface in autumn to sow a polyphyte green manure, shredded at spring flowering. The only treatments are sulphur and contact copper.
Heroic, Actually
Terraced volcanic hillside, no road, everything by hand from pruning to harvest to pressing to bottling to labelling: this is viticoltura eroica in the literal sense. The island's mid-century vineyards produced 250,000 hectolitres; the abandoned parracine still snake through the macchia. Cannavale is one of the few places reversing that abandonment.
Biancolella & Falanghina, 4,500 Each
Nine thousand vines in total — half Biancolella, the island's signature white thought to have come with the Greeks from Euboea in the eighth century BC, half Falanghina, its ancient companion. Two varieties, one hectare, total attention.
The Cave That Breathes
The cellar is an ancient cave dug by hand into the tufa, with channels cut to the surface that keep it cool and humid even on the hottest days. Ischia is full of such caves; almost nobody makes wine in them anymore. Cannavale's wines spend their whole lives in that enveloping, patinaed air.
An Educational Farm
Registered in Campania's register of Educational Farms since 2018, the estate hosts schoolchildren and visitors — the Manna siblings treating environmental education as part of the crop. The farm feeds the island's future twice.
Winemaking — Granite Lids & Frozen Must
The method nods to the island's deep past: grapes are destemmed and go straight into Georgian qvevri, terracotta amphorae and Spanish tinajas lined with beeswax; fermentation is spontaneous, the vessels left open with manual punchdowns twice a day. When fermentation ends, the vessels are filled to the brim and sealed under heavy granite lids with enological mastic, the skins macerating for over five months. Then the skins are removed by hand, basket-pressed at low pressure, and the press wine returned to the amphora to rest until bottling.
Nothing is added along the way — no yeasts, enzymes, sugars or anything else that could alter the natural process; no clarification, only a few rackings; micro amounts of sulphur before bottling, done by hand in the cave. For the bottle-refermented Falanghina, part of the fior di must is frozen at harvest and added back to the base wine before bottling — the ancestral method, preserved in the freezer's humility.
Three wines result: two stills — Insula Felix and Insula Maior — and the refermented Falanghina. The labels reproduce postcards hand-drawn in the 1970s and 80s by Professor Erasmo di Lustro, the siblings' uncle, for island tourists: the family's art for the family's wine. The 2017 harvest of Insula Felix yielded 1,756 bottles — a number the siblings cite with pride, because it says exactly what the hill gave.
The Wines — Two Islands in Clay & a Bubble
Three wines, all born in the cave: Insula Felix and Insula Maior — Biancolella and Falanghina macerated five months in clay — and a bottle-refermented Falanghina finished with its own frozen must.
Insula Felix
Epomeo Bianco IGT — island white in amphoraThe estate's emblem: the fortunate island's white — Biancolella-led, macerated over five months in qvevri and amphora under granite lids, hand-bottled in the cave. The 2017 gave exactly 1,756 bottles. Blossoms, sea air, warm stone: the hill in a glass.
Insula Maior
Ischia Biancolella — the greater islandThe companion white — Biancolella under its island DOC, made by the same slow clay method: destemmed into amphora, open ferment, sealed granite, months of maceration, gentle basket press. Fresher-faced than its sibling, still unmistakably cave-born.
Falanghina Rifermentata
Bottle-refermented — ancestral methodThe island pét-nat: Falanghina lightly pressed at harvest, its fior di must partly frozen, then added back to the base wine before bottling for a natural second fermentation in the bottle. No sugar, no yeast, no disgorging — just the vintage's own sugar, preserved in ice and woken in glass.
Legacy — The Island Before the Crowds
Cannavale's first legacy is land itself. Ischia's agricultural interior emptied as tourism took the coasts; every hectare kept in vines, vegetables and chestnut wood — every parracina wall maintained — is a piece of the island's older self held in trust. The siblings are quite literally custodians: of a farm, a cave, and a memory of peasant Ischia that still climbs the hill to grow its beans.
The second is method: proof that qvevri, granite lids and five-month macerations can produce wines of real precision, not just ideology — wines that specialist merchants describe in the language of wonder. The cave works; the numbers (1,756 bottles, sold out) agree.
The third is educational: as a registered Educational Farm, Cannavale teaches children and visitors that the island's future can be agricultural. And with Anna and Gennaro's generation now rooted on the hill, the terraces above Barano have what they lacked for decades — a next chapter.