Statute of the Castle of Ficulle dated 1534

Heading XIII, of the Council to be done for the Harvests

“The mayor who will be in that time in the Castle of Ficulle, under oath and penalty of five pounds in Kalende of the month of October or according to his will, he will have the duty to do a General Council to propose the harvests to be done”.

At the beginning there were the Etruscans. They went up on these hills perhaps between the seventh and the sixth centuries BC and unveiled the agricultural vocation of these lands, twitching to the forests lands  to cultivate. Moreover they dug caves and tunnels, as they were used to do, that still run through the underground of the suburb. Finally, they left the countryside scattered with secluded tombs full of pottery, discovered (and unfortunately recovered) in the nineteenth Century by self-styled archaeologists.

The agricultural conversion of these forests continued with the Romans who started on these lands “companies” of agricultural production, called “villae rusticae”. At that time, the Chiani river, now just a little bit bigger than a stream, had very different courses. It was the “Clanis”, a mighty river which connected, through an ingenious system of locks, Southern Etruria to Rome, allowing trade and exchanges.

After the Romans, people started to call this place “Figulus” – from which the current name, Ficulle, derives – maybe because of fig trees in evidence or, more probably, because of a consolidated industry of earthenware pottery. “Figulus” in fact means “potter” and this tradition has come to us with all its corollary of “panades” and “glasses” reserved to wine and even today used by the taverns that are philologically more equipped.

Then came the Middle Ages, or better the two Middle Ages: the fantastic one, imprinted by Mario Monicelli on his film (Armata Brancaleone, 1967) where he tells about a certain Groppone from Figulle, “the biggest Captain of Tuscia”, cut in two by Brancaleone from Norcia with one blow of his axe; and the real one, historical, represented by Monk Graziano, founder of the canon law with his “Decretum Gratianii”, a “wise spirit” placed by Dante in the tenth canto of Paradise.

Etruscans and Romans had left on the ground (it is really appropriate to say this) the remains of a thriving viticulture, never forgotten. Indeed, it grew in importance till being added to the articles of the Statute of the Casle of Ficulle (sixteenth Century), in which the harvest was tied in the deliberations of the General Council, reserving high fines to transgressors. Among the most significant legacies of the Etruscans, the technique of “married vine” (with the “stucchio”, namely the elm), prevailing till fifty years ago, now replaced by training systems required by a viticulture that has become always more specialized.

In more recent times, these areas have been affected by a wine renaissance that returned to Ficulle a primacy in wine-growing, as evidenced by the cadastres of Orvieto of the late thirteenth Century. Prestigious names and brands of viticulture have turned forgotten places into extraordinary “domaines”, planting varieties – Chardonnay, Cabernet, Merlot and Pinot – that returned exuberant results. A piece of France that cohabits happily with the historical vineyards planted with Sangiovese, Montepulciano, Grechetto and Procanico. And it is not so unusual to discover wise matching able to let vinedressers and wine lovers tremble with joy.

Today Ficulle is all of this, a web of stories, roots and languages to be found in its wines.