Athens
The wine is named after the ancient city of Atina, the farthest and most imposing Samnite stronghold. The first mention of him appears in Virgil, who named them among the five cities of Lazio, who sided with Turnus against Aeneas. The poet named the city Atina Potens. Atina was conquered by the Romans in the 3rd century BC. and incorporated into the Roman state as a prefecture. Later it had the status of a colony, and then municipalities. Atina's heyday was brought to an end by the barbarian invasions following the fall of the Roman Empire. Despite, that the city was destroyed and looted by invaders, he managed to lift himself from the rubble, to fully bloom again in the Middle Ages. The tragic earthquake from 1349 year, razed Atina to the ground. The city owes its reconstruction from the rubble to the Cantelmo family.
Today Atina is a quiet and peaceful village, with many traces of the past. The most interesting monuments include the preserved fragments of a polygonal one, ancient wall from the 5th and 4th centuries BC, majestic prince's palace (Ducal Palace) and the 17th-century cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta.
Despite the centuries-old history of the city, winemaking does not have long traditions here. In the 19th century, Pasquale Visocchi, local agronomist, who, while in France, had the opportunity to learn the arcane of trade, guided by intuition, he decided to establish plantations of Cabernet and Merlot strains on fertile alluvial soils in the vicinity of Atina. The results did not take long to wait. Atina enjoyed a large and successful harvest from the very beginning, which has been repeated regularly every year since then. In recent years, much more attention has been paid to improving vinification methods and wine aging techniques. The new qualitative approach has brought about tangible effects in the form of a greater share in the domestic market and the wine obtaining the right to appeal the DOC.