Furore! A sort of Neverland

Don’t look for a ring of houses standing round a square here. You won’t find it. Furore, the village that isn’t a village, with its houses scattered on the slopes of the mountain, dropping sheer down to the sea, offers tiny samples of itself, allowing itself to be discovered with flirtatious bashfulness.

You will walk along paths and “petingoli”, squeezed between small plots of land claimed miraculously from the rock and cultivated with age-old love, almost stubbornly.

You will drink fresh and lively wines – both red and white, “capable of filling you with all the sunshine and joyfulness possible”. You will admire vineyards and gardens, terraces and pergolas, hillocks and bending roads that plunge down to the sea. And walls: dry stone walls, painted walls, illustrated walls. Speaking walls. Artistic walls. And churches, tall bell towers and Arab-influenced domes. A vortex of panoramas bathed in silent light, suspended, unreal and secret, just like a fairy tale.

You will listen to the silence.

You will capture the breath of the universe in the distant voice of the sea. You will sense the perfume of myth in the breath of a nymph who’s in love and has always inhabited these ravines. You will live in a dreamy, yet disturbing atmosphere, where every glance is an emotion and every thought a dream.

Raffaele Ferraioli

A wine filled with the essence of rock

Vines cultivated on the Divina Costiera unite land and sea. Furore, its vineyards and the start of an adventure for Marisa Cuomo and Andrea Ferraioli: the story told by Luigi Veronelli.

Do you remember the young woman and two or three kids on the pitiless cliffs that rise up from the splendid sea on the Coast, up, up into the rocky gorge known as Gran Furor? In the 1960’s they made two white wines. “…from Ripoli, Fenile, Moschella, Peppella and Ginestra grapes; one is an amber white wine, the other a parchment white or white gold wine, both characterised by a delicate aroma. Subtly sweet, the first is denser, the second finer”. Marisa and Andrea (possibly two of the kids?) now make Fiorduva.....in the cru area of the municipality of Furore, Costa d’Amalfi doc. This wine is more commonly known as Gran Furor Divina Costiera Bianco. “A passionate wine filled with the essence of rock and sea, without even the slightest hint of sweetness”, is what I wrote last year. I have walked in the vineyards, as I intended, and tasted the 1998 wine again.

A masterpiece of magical balances and spontaneous aggressions, due to the joint desires of the two winemakers and a princely oenologist (who could it be, if not Luigi Moio, in a town called Furor?).

Luigi Veronelli

Tiny spaces

Terra Furoris: fury of the sea against the rocks. Furore, an extreme yet beautiful fjord, keeps the secrets of an excellent winemaking tradition.

Furore disorientates bishops and politicians.

They come here to preach and for their rallies. “Where’s the town?” It’s scattered like a fistful of confetti through pergolas and lemon groves that descend from the 500 metre-altitude of the cellar to the Fiordo, a romantic bay on the Amalfi Coast.

Vines on the rock face: they grow horizontally, they lie on rock and soil that plunge down towards the sea, in the world’s most arid and generous agriculture.

Tiny spaces, grand products.

From the Gran Furor Divina Costiera, Andrea Ferraioli has created “Cantine di Marisa Cuomo”, a delightful thought for his wife on their wedding day. Costa d’Amalfi Doc. A freshly aromatic white and a reserve red which linger in oak barrels. Quality and lust for life. Luigi Moio, the oenologist and poet, has added a touch of nobility.

Gerhard Schroeder, German chancellor on holiday, discovered it in Positano and flooded Bonn. For those who love the Amalfi Coast, these wines are emotions.

Antonio Corbo