Ormeasco di Pornassio DOC 2019 - Ramoino

Traditional Ligurian wine

The Ormeasco wine, a twin of the Dolcetto from Piedmont, which has changed its aroma and flavour in the Arroscia Valley, has a centuries-old history. It was the inhabitants of Clavesana who wanted to implant it already in 1303. And they also imposed rules, such as the date of the harvest and of the winemaking. Grape thieves could even be put to death for their crimes. But the Ormeasco is also the wine that “inspired” (alcoholically speaking) the youth revolution of ’68.

In 1957, a group of artists and intellectuals (including Guy Debord, French, inspirer and guru of the May ’68 in France) arrived in Cosio d’Arroscia from Albissola to celebrate a friend, Piero Simondo, just married in Cosio. Together with him, there were Michèle Bernstein, Asger Jorn, Pinot Gallisio, Pegeen Guggenheim and Ralph Rumney, Walter Olmo. In Cosio they wrote the manifesto of the Situationist International, the artistic and political movement which characterised the 1960s (and which still has a great influence today).

The eclectic grape

Art, politics and wine in that week of 1957. Of course, the Ormeasco drunk by the founders of the Situationist International, is totally different from today’s. Where at the time it was distributed in demijohns, it was the wine of the inns of Albenga and Imperia (in that week of 1957 even the two town inns went down to Pornassio to buy more, as those young people had finished all the stocks in the cellar, whilst saying that the Cosio vineyards, today non-existent, were among the most sought after), now it is a refined, eclectic wine, which can be vinified in red, can be labelled as Superiore, sparkling wine, passito (raisin wine), sciac-e-tra. And ours is a treasure!