Frascati Superiore

6 wineries and 2 wines. Frascati is the wine of the Castelli Romani, the towns on the northern slopes of the Alban Hills just south-east of Rome. The zone, about 8,300 hectares, was first drawn in 1933. The hills are what remains of the Latium Volcano, which began to grow some 600,000 years ago into a cone more than 2,000 metres high before its magma chamber collapsed into a vast caldera. Later explosions opened craters along its western side — the older ones, like Ariccia, now filled and farmed, the younger ones holding the deep lakes of Albano and Nemi. The last eruptions came between 29,000 and 25,000 years ago, and the soils are built mostly of their ash and lapilli. Read more ↓