Julius Caesar served it. Pliny praised it. Two thousand years later, Cambria Winery still makes it — from the same volcanic hills of Messina, from the same ancient Nocera grape that gave birth to the legendary Mamertine wine of antiquity. Three wines of genuine historical and sensory distinction: the Giulio Cesare Mamertino DOC (Nero d'Avola + Nocera), the pure Nocera Rosso del Levriero, and the Nocera-Syrah blend Mastronicola. Mineral, complex, and rooted in a tradition that no other region on earth can replicate. History in every bottle. Available in limited allocation through UniqueWines.
Request a quoteJulius Caesar offered it at the banquet celebrating his third consulate. Pliny the Elder ranked it fourth among the 195 finest wines of first-century Italy. Martial, the epigrammatist, praised it with the instruction to give it whatever name one chose, for it deserved the most famous of all. The wine in question was Mamertine — and it was made, as it is made today, from the ancient volcanic lands of Messina, on the Strait of Sicily, between two volcanoes.
Cambria Winery inherits this extraordinary lineage with full awareness of its weight and its opportunity. The estate's philosophy is one of rigorous quality: the enhancement of the typicality of the Messina area through the expert balance of modern technology and careful artisanal tradition. At the centre of everything is a grape that most of the wine world has yet to discover — the Nocera — described in ancient Greek sources and recorded as among the oldest vine varieties attested in the Mediterranean, and the ancestral foundation of the Mamertine wine that made these hills famous.
The estate's vineyards occupy the extremely mineral lands of the hills of Messina, a geological theatre suspended between Etna to the south-west and the Aeolian island of Vulcano to the north-east. The soils carry the imprint of both volcanic systems — a mineral complexity that expresses itself in wines of unusual depth, aromatic persistence, and structural integrity.
GIULIO CESARE is the estate's signature wine and its most direct homage to history: a Mamertino DOC produced from the encounter of Nero d'Avola and Nocera, sourced from the sunny lands of Furnari in the beating heart of the Mamertine production area. It is a wine that, in the estate's words, best expresses the insular and challenging character of the Strait of Messina — broad, complex, fine, opening with blueberries and blackberries before moving through undergrowth to a light smoky finish. The structure is important; the texture enveloping, mellow, and round.
ROSSO DEL LEVRIERO is the pure Nocera — a genuine rarity in modern viticulture, reborn from a vineyard of excellence in one of Sicily's richest areas. Aged in barriques with the precision of careful winemaking, it is a wine of refined delicacy and unmistakable persistence: soft, silky, genuinely individual. To taste it is to understand why the ancient world held this grape in such regard.
MASTRONICOLA is a blend of Nocera and Syrah of very high quality — complex, jam-fruity on the nose with small red and blue fruits, evolving into spicy aromas of mint chocolate, wood, black pepper, cloves, leather, and tobacco. Fresh on the palate, with soft and pleasant tannins, it closes with notes of liquorice and burnt caramel. It is the most internationally approachable of the three wines, without sacrificing the Sicilian identity that makes Cambria distinctive.
Cambria Winery represents one of the most historically significant wine estates available through UniqueWines. To drink Mamertine from Messina is to participate in a tradition that spans more than two millennia.
