Tenuta Liliana – a new Cabernet Sauvignon from Puglia
Puglia is best known for big red wines, principally from native grape varieties such as Primitivo and Negroamaro. Almost inevitably, Puglia also has representation from the international brigade, typified by Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Often, it’s easy to dismiss international varieties because of their ubiquity. However, there are exceptions to the rule. One of those is the Cabernet Sauvignon from Tenuta Liliana, a young and ambitious boutique winery establishing itself in the far south of Italy’s heel.
Dead Lions and Bees
This tale strongly reminds me of a Biblical story, immortalised on the tins of Tate & Lyle’s Golden Syrup, “out of the strong came forth sweetness”.
Now it’s time to explain about Dead Lions and Bees.
Origins
This story begins with Olive trees. Puglia has 50-60 million olive trees. They produce 40% of Italy’s olive oil, 12% of the world’s production. Puglia has 30 different varieties of olive, covering 370,000 hectares, with 148,000 farms. This area dwarfs even the extensive 110,000 hectares of Puglian vineyards. Additionally, olive growing dates back over 3,000 years, and there are many ancient trees over 1,000 years old. To say that the olive has been a way of life here for millennia is something of an understatement.
Dead Lions
Xylella in Puglia. The Lost Olive Groves ©Edward Burtynsky
In 2013, catastrophe struck Puglia due to a bacterial infection which kills olive trees and has no known cure. Furthermore, it has never been seen in Olive trees before. Once Xylella fastidiosa appears, it spreads fast. This pandemic has so far destroyed upwards of 20 million olive trees. The first symptoms show within 18 months of infection, and in most cases, the tree dies within another two years.
The epicentre of this plague is in the southern heel of Puglia in the provinces of Taranto, Brindisi and Lecce. Called Olive Quick Decline Syndrome (OQDS), it’s moving northward, and Puglian olive oil production has already fallen by 50%.1 In Lecce, this figure is 90%!
Consequently, many olive groves (along with their traditions, culture and employment) in this area have been destroyed, and the olive mills lie silent. Meanwhile, this land can support little else, except for vines.
What about vines?
The problem is that vines and wines are already prolific here – Puglia is the second most productive wine region in Italy. Consequently, to be successful, any new vineyard creation would need to focus on ultra-premium quality and price. That has not been Puglia’s wine model. Indeed, there are still lingering perceptions of the cheap bulk wines from Puglia’s past, despite huge improvements in Puglian wine quality.
You would need to create an icon from scratch and garner an international reputation and sales. All this implies colossal investment and determination, and even then, success is far from guaranteed. But it has been done elsewhere in Italy, for example, in Tuscany. Let’s hold on to that thought.
Liliana and Antonio Intiglietta
And Bees
Enter Antonio Intiglietta and his wife Liliana Angelillo, the creators of Tenuta Liliana.
Antonio was born in Brindisi, and so is Puglian by birth. However, he has spent much of his life in Milan as an entrepreneur and businessman, and is the President of Ge.Fi. This company creates and runs international trade fairs and exhibitions. He was also the deputy Mayor of Milan.
Both Antonio and Liliana were deeply affected by witnessing the Xylella crisis unfold and consequently founded Tenuta Liliana in 2017, at Parabita, near Lecce, where they already had an old family house.
The Tenuta Liliana Estate
Initially, the estate comprised that old house and four hectares of ex-olive groves. This has now undergone a transformation to thirteen hectares of vines and a state-of-the-art winery. It carries Liliana’s name, and appropriately, has a Lily as the brand logo.
Creating a new estate from a blank canvas is a rare challenge and opportunity. However, there are some precedents for this in recent years in the Bolgheri and Maremma regions of Tuscany. To be successful, long-term investment is a critical requirement. Hence, it’s encouraging that some of the patient capital required for the project came through clever crowdfunding, creating a “wine share economy” business model.
Vineyards and Terroir
The Vineyards
The 13 ha of vineyards are in five separate plots, all planted in 2018, and are all within five km of the winery.
90% of the vines are Cabernet Sauvignon, with a few additional rows of Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc. There is also one hectare of Sauvignon Blanc for a white wine, Veneri. In 2027, it will use Georgian Qvevri 2, so I assume this will be an Amber wine in style. Meanwhile, their first release of Sauvignon Blanc is the 2024 Vintage, conventionally made in stainless steel, and a review of this wine, called Veneri, is here.
As part of creating an ultra-premium wine for the world stage, wine consultant Carlo Ferrini 3 provides technical knowledge alongside the expertise of winemaker and agronomist Andrea Fattizzo.
Cabernet Sauvignon
Cabernet Sauvignon perfectly suits the climate and soils, and is resilient to climatic extremes. Of course, it’s also responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious wines. The vine clones and rootstocks were carefully chosen with the help of Pierre-Marie Guillaume at his Guillaume nursery in France.
A mixture of Cabernet Sauvignon clones provides the wines with a range of colour, complexity, tannins and balance. This mix of properties ensures base wines to blend from and suggests that the final wine will also age well. The rootstock selection matches the various soil types, which range from free-draining sands through iron clays to fossil sandstones, according to the natural variations within the plots.
Additionally, these five plots are relatively close to both the Adriatic and Ionian seas, so they benefit from the breezes and the intensity of sunlight. This is a flat area, so the presence of one of the highest points in Salento at 200 metres altitude is important in terms of constant wind, which is a natural way to reduce temperature, humidity, and the risk of fungal diseases. Altitude also brings welcome diurnal variation. And while this part of the Mezzogiorno is, of course, hot and dry, the vine row orientation benefits from the wind while gaining protection from the fiercest sun.
Farming has been certified organic since 2024. However, Regenerative Agriculture techniques are also in use.4 These improve the life and structure of the soil disturbed by the change from olives to grapes. For example, there’s no tilling, with sheep used for grazing and fertilising at appropriate times.
Winery
The Winery
Meanwhile, the new winery is built within an old stone quarry. Carparo is the local sandstone, seen in the buildings of nearby towns such as Lecce and Gallipoli.
Ultra-premium wines demand statement architecture, something the Italians have an innate talent for. This one combines Carparo, steel and glass. It even features a garden roof. Inside the winery, the latest kit includes solar power, truncated-conical fermentation tanks and French barriques and tonneaux for maturation in the Barrel hall. As befits a new winery, there is capacity for expansion.
Furthermore, with one eye on income generation, the winery also makes an ideal destination for the increasingly important oenotourism in these parts.
The Wine
Tenuta Liliana, Cabernet Sauvignon, IGT Salento, Puglia, Italy, 2022. 14.2%
Tenuta Liliana Cabernet Sauvignon
Technical
The Cabernet Sauvignon harvest took place by hand on 26 September 2022, with sorting and destemming at the winery. Fermentation of separate plots was in truncated conical cement tanks. On 7 January 2023, maturation commenced in a mix of new French barriques and tonneaux for 18 months. After final blending, there were another seven months in the bottle, under cork. There are 20,000 bottles, and refreshingly, those bottles are of a sensible weight.
The 2022 vintage is the second vintage, but this is the first pure Cabernet Sauvignon, designed to be the Estate’s flagship wine.
Tasting
Decanting this young wine for two hours helps open it up. Then in the glass, a deep, dense red, with purple flecks of youth. The nose opens with a welcome complexity of aromas that encourage you to drink, but stop to appreciate them before doing so. There are aromas of blackcurrant, plum and strawberry fruit, accompanied by violets and notes of earth, cinnamon, tobacco and mint. In other words, a classic Cabernet. This is no over-oaked blockbuster either. Rather, the oak treatment imparts subtlety and underpins the ripe fruit, with hints of cedar and smoke.
These aromas reprise on the plate, carried by a poised balance of alcohol and acidity. The tannins are texturally elegant, offering silken flow rather than lushness. There’s a graphite undertow and a savoury olive note on the long, graceful finish. The oak isn’t dominant but will doubtless integrate further as the wine ages. There’s no doubt about the potential for further evolution and complexity of this wine over the next decade, perhaps longer. Also, it has the energy and vibrancy typical of young vines, and so the potential for even more complex wine in future vintages as the vines mature isn’t in doubt. A great debut!
For Cabernet Sauvignon connoisseurs, this wine is more akin in style and flavour to those Cabernets from Tuscany than, say, Coonawarra or Napa. There is something Italianate, so perhaps we will speak of a typically Puglian Cabernet terroir in future years. Speculative, perhaps, but imaginable.
UK Availability
Available at Tacco. Bottle price £95.00. Given the glamorous world of ultra-premium wine, this is a fair price.
Food
Lamb, Cress, Rosemary Potatoes
As for food, the gastronomic abilities of Cabernet Sauvignon with meat and game are legion. However, it’s also good with the umami flavours of Aubergine and Mushrooms too. As usual, I prefer simple food flavours to let complex wines take centre stage. Consequently, roast lamb with cress and rosemary potatoes hit the spot for me.
And Finally
Cynics might suggest that the creation of Tenuta Liliana is a drop in the ocean in the face of the scale of OQDS. But Bolgheri and Maremma have now demonstrated that from small beginnings, an entirely new appellation can be born.
And as many drops make a rainstorm, so perhaps others will follow in Liliana’s footsteps. We may even be witnessing the birth of a new Cabernet wine region.
Regardless, Tenuta Liliana is a winery to follow closely in the years ahead. For the quality of the wine, of course. But also for the environmental, social and economic dimensions essential for a sustainable future.
Just remember, Dead Lions and Bees, you’ll find the story in Judges 14:14.
Location
Tenuta Liliana
Villa Lilium
Contrada Rischiazzi
73052 Parabita
Lecce
Puglia
Italy
What3words Location
Notes
1. Xylella fastidiosa
Xylella is a critical agricultural threat worldwide, affecting crops such as grapes, coffee, peaches, almonds, pears and oranges. It is a bacterium that transmits via sap-sucking insects, originally from Central America, and is now present in more than 560 different plant species. The bacteria spread to the plant when the insects feed on the sap, and the bacteria then multiply rapidly within the plants. This blocks the uptake of water and nutrients, killing the plants. Warm conditions are also necessary, so climate change is also compounding the spread.
The Puglian olive tree infection is from a subspecies, Xylella fastidiosa pausa, with transmission by the Meadow spittlebug (Philaenus spumarius). It may have come to Puglia via a coffee plant from Costa Rica. This is the same species of bacteria causing Pierce’s disease of vines in California (spread by sharpshooter insects and first seen in 1996). However, in Puglia, the infection has not spread to grapevines as the spittlebug does not live on vines.
2. Carlo Ferrini
One of Italy’s greatest wine consultants with an incredible track record.
3. Qvevri
See my articles on Josko Gravner for more information about these unique buried terracotta vessels that originate in Georgia.
4. Regenerative Agriculture
This subject deserves its own story, which is beyond the scope of this article. For now, suffice it to say that it involves using a range of appropriate farming techniques that recover degraded land and soils and improve resilience to climate change. This produces healthy food naturally by working with local ecosystems. Watch this space for a forthcoming detailed article on this subject.