This is a story of two family’s passion, risk taking and love of the land. It is a story of pioneers in winemaking passing the baton to a new entrant into the field of winemaking, but someone who has great experience with wines. It is a story of an attorney and a wine journalist, husband and wife, changing careers to pursue their passion; and a story of their successor who is a wine journalist/sommelier/attorney who also changed her career to pursue her passion. It is a story of Manuela Piancastelli, Peppe Mancini and Teresa Mincione.

Terre del Principe

What happens when there are no family members to assume the operations of a vineyard? This problem confronted our dear friends Manuela Piancastelli and Peppe Mancini, owners of the historic Terre del Principe winery located in Castel Campagnano, Caserta. Fortunately, Teresa Mincione stepped forward and purchased Terre del Principe’s historic Villa Monticello vineyard in 2021 from which she produced her first vintage. (See above photo.)

Terre del Principe was a new winery when it produced its first vintage in 2003. (See above photo.) During its years of operation, Terre del Principe produced EU certified organic wines from three obscure ancient grapes cultivated only in the Southern part of Caserta: pallagrello nero, pallagrello bianco and casavecchia. At one time these grapes were a favorite of the Bourbon rulers (before the 1861 unification of Italy), but fell in disfavor after unification and were “lost” and used only by local farmers for small rustic productions.

Peppe remembered the pallagrello grapes from his childhood and 40 years ago embarked upon “re-discovering” the grapes. While rediscovering the pallagrello grapes, Peppe found an old vine of casavecchia grapes near an ancient Roman house in Pontelatone, Caserta. DNA testing confirmed the originality of the casavecchia grape and distinguished it from the pallagrello nero grape. The pallagrello bianco, pallagrello nero and casavecchia grapes were so forgotten from viticulture memory that they were not included in the National Register of winemaking grapes until about fifteen years ago.

When Peppe left his profession as an attorney to work on making wine from these ancient grapes, he met Manuela, a journalist, and they formed a loving partnership; they married and started Terre del Principe. Together Peppe and Manuela are the “parents” of the many new wineries that have emerged in the Terre del Volturno IGT wine area. The revered Italian wine and food journalist, philosopher and activist and proponent of organic viticulture and the use of indigenous grapes Luigi Veronelli once said (translated into English),

“Castel Campagnano had everything, absolutely everything to be elected as a cru. It was missing two winemakers with the soul of the land. Now (the land) has them: Manuela and Peppe” (source Terre del Principe webpage).

Teresa Mincione

The torch has been passed from Manuela and Peppe to Teresa. Teresa is a combination of Manuela and Peppe as pointed out above she is both a wine journalist like Manuela and an attorney like Peppe. As noted in Luciano Pignataro’s blog post of January 1, 2024, https://www.lucianopignataro.it/a/teresa-mincione-dalla-toga-al-casavecchia-nulla-e-per-caso/246055/#google_vignetteTeresa did not make the change in career on a whim. In addition to being a sommelier, she has taken trips to Burgundy, Champagne and throughout Italy. Teresa has had a 12 year collaboration with Slow Wine. Pignataro noted that she has an overwhelming passion similar to Manuela that drove them both to leave the journalism profession and pursue winemaking. Manuela has entrusted one of Campania’s most beautiful vineyards to Teresa; a passing of the baton to someone of kindred spirit.

In a follow up interview in La Stanza del Vino published January 13, 2024, Teresa was asked by Michelangelo Tagliente, Editor in Chief – “…how, when and why did you decide to become a producer?” Teresa responded as follows (translated from Italian to English):

I believe that in life there are predestined, ancestral paths. And I believe, at the same time, that the love you feel for what you do with deep and visceral passion can reveal itself, in hindsight, as an underestimated accelerator of arrival towards what at first may seem impossible or a “mere” big dream in the drawer. In a tangle of important situations, I had the happy courage to read what life was offering me and to move to the other side of the story. No longer as someone who tells the story of the territory through glimpses of other people’s lives, but as someone who, aware of the path taken, through their own experience, is committed to narrating with their work, in the vineyard and in the cellar, a unique terroir. In other words, to convey the preciousness of a small area with great potential, through the voice of native vines typical of the province of Caserta: Casavecchia and Pallagrello. Small voices compared to the chorus of the Italian wine scene, but no less extraordinary, capable of telling, with the nuances that are specific to each one, a territory that at one time was also made great by history through the unforgettable soul of the Bourbons who loved Pallagrello so much that they included it in the historic “vigna del ventaglio”.  https://lastanzadelvino.it/2024/01/13/nuove-vignaiole-teresa-mincione-ma-nulla-e-per-caso/

Teresa’s first vintage in 2021 is called “Nulla e` per Caso”, which translates to “Nothing is by Chance”. Teresa recently received the Napoli newspaper Il Mattino’s Eat & Drink Award as Wine Producer of the Year. Congratulations to Teresa. And the many of us that have enjoyed Terre del Principe wines are ecstatic that Teresa who is as passionate and as accomplished as Manuela and Peppe has assumed the cultivation and production of wines from Terre del Principe’s prized vineyard. Here is a technical description of Teresa’s first vintage as provided by our friend Simona de Pisapia, owner of Si Wine Enoteca. https://www.si-wine.it/products/terre-del-volturno-igt-nulla-e-per-caso-teresa-mincione?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAabTnDnqB6akcu8kRzGhfCUXKjIvj1yUrbFv52yOQLiFTLESGOY6IdI9AIg_aem_87W6PyloK9OhkM3OG8mPcg

And we look forward to meeting Teresa on our next trip to Italy.