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Administrative area · Italy

Campania

Southern Italy’s most serious region for indigenous varieties, with Aglianico, Fiano and Greco all grown on volcanic soils.

mediterraneanmoderate

About Campania

Taurasi, made from Aglianico grown at altitude in Irpinia, is often called the Barolo of the south: very high in tannin and acidity, slow to develop, savoury and long-lived.

Fiano di Avellino and Greco di Tufo are two of Italy’s finest white DOCGs, both capable of ageing far longer than most southern Italian whites.

Campania is a administrative area, not an appellation

No authority delimits this name or attaches rules to it. A political unit — an Italian region, an English county, a US county — used as a wine area because that is how the industry and its readers talk about it, not because a wine authority delimited it. That does not make it less real or less useful — it means nothing legal follows from it, and you will not generally find it on a label as a controlled designation.

Grapes

Wines from here

white

Fiano di Avellino

Campania’s textured, nutty white — one of southern Italy’s few whites that genuinely improves with age.

red

Taurasi

Aglianico grown at altitude in Campania — extremely tannic, savoury and long-lived, often called the Barolo of the south.

white

Greco di Tufo

A taut, mineral Campanian white grown on sulphur-rich volcanic soils.

Climate

Mediterranean but tempered by significant altitude inland, which keeps acidity high in a hot latitude.

These are influences on how a wine turns out, not determinants of it. Picking date, yield, vine age and every winemaking decision sit between the climate and the glass.

Places within it

  • Fiano di Avellino — A hill appellation inland from Naples making one of southern Italy’s few genuinely ageworthy dry whites.
  • Greco di Tufo — A small Irpinian appellation on sulphur-bearing tufa, making the firmest and most structured white in Campania.
  • Taurasi — Aglianico grown high in the Campanian hills — the "Barolo of the South", and a comparison that for once holds up.

What to eat, and how to serve it

Derived from this region’s signature styles. Each is listed separately, because a region does not have one serving temperature.

Taurasi

Serve at 16–18°C (cool room temperature).

Try with lamb shank, roast chicken or fillet steak.

Fiano di Avellino

Serve at 10–12°C (lightly chilled).

Try with mozzarella, fillet steak or salmon.

Sources

Sources consulted