This project finds its own space around Lemmen’s land, an ancient rural settlement abandoned for over 50 years and with a fire behind its back in 2011. Legend has it that the village of Lemmen, Limen originally, was founded in the eight century by a group of Greek fleeing refugees and its inhabitants would have then given rise to the town of Riomaggiore. 

This absolute neglect gave us the chance to define our own agricultural manifesto: to preserve and give value to the results obtained tenaciously by those who preceded us; to respect the nature trying to “cooperate” with it instead of “operate” on it; to support biodiversity and to minimize our environmental impact; to give up fully on weed killers and synthetic fertilizers.

We are committed to bringing Lemmen’s land back to its former glory with regenerative agricultural practices that respect the soil.

In 2014 Lucia, searching for a farm where she could enjoy tranquility and nature, came across Lemmen, a country location on the heights of Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre, which had been abandoned for decades because it lacked a driveway. 

At their first inspection everything looked full with brambles, weeds and burned logs. It was pretty evident that she would have to put a lot of effort to restore that ancient harmony between man’s work and nature. Nevertheless, the magic and the vibrations which that place transmitted were irresistible, and within a quarter of an hour - the time it took to decide to purchase the first of the dwellings - she decided to commit their hearts, skills, and resources to reviving the rural settlement and the surrounding lands. In time, the project would have turned into a bigger picture involving the whole family.

Stella di Lemmen today spreads on four hectares, exposed towards south-west, on the eastern edge of Cinque Terre National Park.

Terracings are an essential part of the Cinque Terre’s ecosystem and they have been the target of the greatest work of renovation at Stella di Lemmen: so far we have resteored with traditional techniques, over 6000 square meters of dry stone walls. The geographical and anthropic characteristics of this territory are unique. A hilly area naturally irregular and uneven, mitigated by the construction of belts for farming which go down towards the sea with steep slopes.

It is interesting to know that viticulture in this very coastal area facilitates, thanks to terracing and the peculiar weather conditions, high levels of biodiversity both at the soil and at the plants level, with a great benefit for the entire ecosystem and for the products obtained from it.

Since we needed to start from scratch, we decided to rely on the principles of biodynamic agriculture and first of all to start restoring the classical varieties of white local wine, Vermentino, Bosco, Albarola. The vineyard, often grassed and enriched by the presence of green manure, is only treated with natural pesticides and it is also surrounded by numerous other plantations where families of bees and hens freely move around creating an agricultural multifunctional organism. 

Limen, our first white wine, was born with the intent to catch the essence of this place and to recreate the light and the freshness of the sea. Stella di Lemmen’s vineyards are cultivated on terracing at almost 350m distance from the sea where the wind is rich with salty air. 

Where once used to live only bramble bushes of over three meters wrapped around maritime pine trucks burned by the fire, now live olive trees, vegetable gardens, different kind of shrubs, fruit-trees such as citrus, almond trees, peach trees, apple trees, figs, pear trees and a lot of herbs, medicinal herbs and flowers, with an eye of regard for those species which attract pollinating insects. 

This increase of biodiversity turns the action of our bees to collect the nectar into a very varied harvest with a great selection of different kinds of honey and the nutrition of our hens to be strictly linked to the high quality of their eggs. During the night they are kept in little hen houses to protect them from the predators while during the day they’re free to scratch around in the vineyards, in the fields, woods and olive trees. 

Stella di Lemmen is a family business in which we have Lucia, tireless worker and essential guide, supported by a little synergic group of tenacious and motivated people, a group of experts of this territory and organic wine and her sons who represent the new generation. 

Everything has to be done by hand. All of the terraces here are maintained by dry stone walls. So it’s really too steep, too narrow for any kind of mechanization. This requires a very meticulous work team.  

What’s our goal? As Lucia says, it’s to be able to transmit to those who come by “the breath of nature”, so to “leave the moorings” which held us from being “stolen from the world” and understand that a life in harmony with nature is a life in harmony with ourselves.