Ottaviano Lambruschi

Liguria

Castelnuovo Magra, La Spezia

The Ligurian coast is a dramatic place, a landscape of spectacular but forbidding charm, rendered inviting by generations of Ligurians who have carved out lives on the precipitous cliffs that soar out of the narrow strip of coast that is the Italian Riviera. There is significant beauty in this, in the improbably positioned towns, in the snaking roads slipping into the darkness of mountains, and in the vertiginous terraced vineyards – sites now often abandoned by a generation less steadfast in the face of hardship. Octogenarian Ottaviano Lambruschi is a lean chiselled man, evocative perhaps of the rugged landscape of Liguria itself, a symbol of respect for the land and adaption to it.
 
After years working in the marble quarries of Carrara, Ottaviano established his estate in the 1970s when he purchased two hectares of woodlands on steep, rugged slopes in Costa Marina, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Committed to the production of Vermentino, Ottaviano and his brother Alessandro carved out a vineyard dedicated to the grape, supplemented by careful purchases of prime vineyards. Today, Ottaviano’s son Fabio runs the estate, though Ottaviano – inseparable from his vineyard, and perhaps from honest work – still nurtures the vines.

 

 

 

 

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