Molise is the second smallest and least populated region in Italy. Some sarcastically over the years have even launched the slogan “Molise does not exist” joking about the difficulty that too often this area still encounters in making its beauties known compared to other regions of Italy.
And Molise has plenty of beauties to sell: a wedding favor set between the Adriatic Sea and the Italian Apennine ridge, rich in history, art and culture of millenary origins.
Among the most precious pearls that make up this wonderful favor positioned almost in the geographic heel of the “Italian boot” there is Tintilia: an ancient variety of native red berried vines that is found and is produced only and exclusively in this small regional territory and which takes the name of Tintilia del Molise.
This variety was originally grown mainly as a sapling in a mountainous environment between the 1400s and 1500s above sea level on the only road that at the time connected Campobasso to cities such as Foggia, Naples, Benevento, Rome. It has a leaf structure with an often variegated shape and a peculiar sparse cluster of very small dimensions, characterized by berries with a very pruinose skin and full of anthocyanins.
Grape variety not easy to grow, but which gives elegant and long-lived wines. It seems that his birth in Molise dates back to 1300 and is linked to an intriguing Italo-Spanish love story between Count Carafa, a nobleman originally from Naples descended from the Caracciolo family and one of the daughters of a long lieutenant of the Bourbons, of Spanish origin.
During the wedding, the bride, as was the tradition of the time, had to bring wine for the wedding dinner and chose for the occasion a Spanish wine with a ruby red color that delighted all the guests. A few years after the wedding, however, the young woman fell seriously ill, leaving the Count in total desperation and loneliness. To try to alleviate this immense pain, the nobleman decided to commission in Spain some slips of that vine that had embellished his wedding and had the first vine of Tintilia planted in the mountains of the province of Campobasso.
However, there is no tangible visible evidence of the presence of Tintilia in the centuries prior to the 1900s, so the historical recomposition of those periods is mainly left to the search for connections and the reconstruction of historical events.
In any case, it seems almost certain that this vine arrived in Molise thanks to the Bourbons since, even if its import was not caused by the romantic love story told, other theories argue that this vine was still brought to Molise land by the same Bourbon soldiers in 1700 ‘during their dominion at the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
Its subsequent history was compromised by the very low yield, even just two bunches per plant and therefore a not very productive variety like that of Tintilia was not commercially “convenient” for the producer.
Practically up to the 1990s, Tintilia was used in small percentages only as a “coloring” blended grape in blends with other grapes then more grown in the Molise area by exploiting its high anthocyanin content.
Then the turning point…!
Thanks to the very young Riccardo Desiderio, journalist and brand ambassador of Molise in Italy and in the world, I discover that the very first bottle ever produced and labeled 100% Tintilia was the work of the historic Cantina Valtappino di Campobasso back in 1989, after a revaluation project of this vine in collaboration with the University of Campobasso and resulted in the first bottle in 1998, labeled with the name ‘Tintiglia’ deriving from “Tignill” (tintorea), a dialect term with which the Molisans call the Tintilia, whose name seems to derive instead from the Spanish “Tinto” which means “bright” red.
What is certain is that it can be safely attested that this first label represented one of the epochal watersheds for the history of this native vine, which in 2011 was even honored with the attribution of the DOC (Tintilia del Molise DOC) and a few years ago in the 2017 was also established the Consortium that protects its production (Consorzio di Tutela Tintilia Doc del Molise).
What to say? Long live Tintilia and its small but precious “home”, Molise.
