Italy

From an ancient seabed at the foot of the Alps to a hectare of vines on a live volcano.

Italy in this book runs the full length of the country and most of its geology. There's a family that bought their Nebbiolo vineyard in 1671, when the sands they farm were already understood to be an ancient sea. There's a lawyer who walked away from Milan to make Barolo on the summit of Perno. And there's a former cellarmaster who left one of Etna's great estates for a single hectare of old vines at seven hundred and fifty metres, because that is where the wine he wanted to make actually grows. The thread, as ever, is people who chose the hard version.

Sixteen Estates