Molise

Molise only became a region in its own right in 1963, when it was separated from Abruzzo, and it has spent the time since being the answer to a trivia question about which Italian region people forget. It has one genuinely distinctive thing, a red grape that was nearly extinct thirty years ago, and it is slowly building an identity around it.

The Landscape The territory is 55 per cent mountain and 45 per cent hill, with effectively no flat land at all. It splits into Alto Molise, centred on Isernia, and Basso Molise, with Campobasso inland and Termoli on the Adriatic. The Abruzzi and Samnite Apennines run through it without ever becoming especially rugged. Inland the winters are harsh and snowy and the summers hot; along the coast everything is milder and better balanced.

The Ground Geologically Molise shares its formation with eastern Lazio and Abruzzo. The limestone and dolomite that make the steep Apennine slopes have been shoved north-eastwards from the south-west, dragging older formations along and exposing sandstone and clay. The hills and the coastal strip are different again: Plio-Quaternary marine deposits — lithified sands, conglomerates and marls left by cycles of rising and falling sea level through the glacial periods. Clay and sand dominate, particularly in the broad Trigno valley and the narrower middle and lower Biferno, which is where the Pentro zone sits. Coastal and lower-hill soils are sandy loam, coarse and moderately calcareous; inland they are deeper, more clayey, hold water better and can be very high in limestone indeed.

A Crossroads Molise absorbed everyone. Greeks, Etruscans and Romans all passed through, and to them add the Oscans, Picenes and Samnites, who developed the vineyards around Campobasso and Trivento, around Agnone — a town known worldwide for casting bells — at Bojano, and as far as Sepino at the foot of the Matese. The archaeological record of their interest in the vine is substantial, and the region works well as a small-scale model of how Italian viticulture assembled itself out of overlapping cultures.

The Grapes Montepulciano and Trebbiano cover most of the vineyard and produce sound wine that would not be out of place in Abruzzo. Aglianico appears in the south, Falanghina and Moscato among the whites. The grape that matters, though, is Tintilia. Its name suggests a Spanish import — from tinto, red — and it was long assumed to be one; it is now understood to be a variety of Molise’s own. It grows best above 400 metres, gives a deeply coloured, peppery, firmly structured red with real acidity, and it had been reduced to a few scattered hectares before a deliberate recovery effort brought it back. Tintilia del Molise now has its own DOC.

The Critical Take Without Tintilia there would not be much to say. The region’s Montepulciano and Trebbiano are competent and largely interchangeable with their neighbours’, and a great deal of Molise fruit has historically left in tank to be bottled elsewhere. Tintilia gives it something no one else has, and the producers who have committed to it are making the case convincingly — it is one of the more successful varietal rescues in recent Italian wine. The honest caveat is scale: this is a small region with few producers and limited distribution, so finding the wines takes effort that most people will not make.

At the Table Cavatelli with lamb ragu, caciocavallo from Agnone, ventricina, and the fish of the Termoli coast. Tintilia has the grip for the lamb and enough acidity for the cheese.

Where to Start Tintilia del Molise, which is the whole reason to look here. If a producer makes both a Tintilia and a Montepulciano, taste them together and the region’s argument makes itself.