LA
NDS
CAPE

BEHIND
a GREAT WINE,
the LANDSCAPES
of HISTORY

ALONG THE VIA ANNIA

The landscape of the great land reclamations

The classic route to Terre di Grassaga follows, more or less, the course of the Via Annia, the ancient Roman road that two thousand years ago led from Adria to Aquileia.

You glide into a vast plain of orchards, poplars, willows and black locusts, and wide stretches of maize. This is a land tamed by human toil and ingenuity, for centuries a marsh where the fresh water of the rivers met the salt water of the northern Adriatic. It is the landscape of the great land reclamations, dotted with pumping stations, symbols of this huge work of recovery, that rise above the countryside like triumphal arches. Even today, the old people of the villages along the ancient road point to the places the sea once reached, as a reminder that the undertaking was long, that it was completed only in the last century, and that no fewer than fifty thousand hectares of new land emerged in the lower Piave area: an expanse brimming with the good fruits of the countryside.

Meeting the Piave

Even today, that ancient route crosses the Piave near San Donà, Noventa and Musile: here it meets the river of the Great War, which a hundred years ago held back the Austrian soldiers and marked the redemption of the Italian army.

It is also the last stretch of the long course of the Red River (so called for all the blood shed there during the Battle of the Solstice), which flows from the Dolomite peaks through the valleys and hills of the Altamarca down to the silent plain of the Veneto and the Po. The lands along its banks are fertile, particularly suited to growing vines and producing superb red and white wines. From Terre di Grassaga, looking towards San Donà, you can make out the Piave embankment in the distance, and on summer evenings you can feel its breeze coming down from the mountains, across the river and into the trees.