Cantele (Puglia)
Every one of has a story to tell, just like a wine.
The story of a wine can be told through generations, seasons, memories, hopes, and vines. And our eyes never seem to stray from those vines as they bask in the sun and we contemplate the heavens and the cycles of life.
This land existed long before anyone left a footprint on its soil. Its memory stretches back thousands of years. It’s the same land where our grapes ripen, year and year, in the sunshine of summer, just like they have for millennia.
The story of a wine can be told through generations, seasons, memories, hopes, and vines. And our eyes never seem to stray from those vines as they bask in the sun and we contemplate the heavens and the cycles of life.
This land existed long before anyone left a footprint on its soil. Its memory stretches back thousands of years. It’s the same land where our grapes ripen, year and year, in the sunshine of summer, just like they have for millennia.
You could call our story a love story, one that our family has lived since the end of the Second World War. A story that interweaves passion and memory in the cradle of Italy’s south, a story that has Puglia’s beautiful Salento peninsula as its backdrop.
Our History
These wines are a piece of history. It starts out in the early 20th century, against the backdrop of a still sepia-toned Italy. It’s the story of a man named Giovanni Battista Cantele and his family’s winery. He’s the first character in this tale, which begins in the city of Imola during the First World War. Giovanni Battista Cantele had left the city where he was born, Pramaggione, as he followed the woman who would one day become his wife and the mother of his children Augusto and Domenico. She would later become the inspiration for a wine that now bears her name: Teresa Manara.
The great war was over
Giovanni Battista had begun working in the wine world in Puglia where he would source wines to sell in the north. When Teresa Manara accompanied her husband on one of his trips south and saw Lecce for the first time, he was as taken with the city as he had been. She loved it so much that she couldn’t resist her desire to relocate there. It was a time when people were heading north in search of work in the big cities. But they decided to move from the north to the south to resettle in Lecce, a city that the march of time had forgotten.
Augusto was just still a kid
Many years later, Augusto Cantele would start our family’s winery Cantine Cantele, together with his father and his brother Domenico in 1979. But first he went to study winemaking in the north in Conegliano and he stayed on in the north to work at wineries in Veneto where he discovered his passion for white wines. In the 1970s, as Italy was once again going through radical changes, Augusto returned to his family in Lecce and began working as a consultant in the villages of Guagnano and Salice Salentino. It wouldn’t be until the 1990s, when he bought his first vineyards, that he would produce the first bottles with the Cantele family name.
Today
Teresa Manara and Giovanni Battista Cantele’s grandchildren are the main character in the story: Augusto’s children, Gianni and Paolo; and Domenico’s children, Umberto and Luisa. They all share one thing in common: A passion and a talent for wine.
Our History
These wines are a piece of history. It starts out in the early 20th century, against the backdrop of a still sepia-toned Italy. It’s the story of a man named Giovanni Battista Cantele and his family’s winery. He’s the first character in this tale, which begins in the city of Imola during the First World War. Giovanni Battista Cantele had left the city where he was born, Pramaggione, as he followed the woman who would one day become his wife and the mother of his children Augusto and Domenico. She would later become the inspiration for a wine that now bears her name: Teresa Manara.
The great war was over
Giovanni Battista had begun working in the wine world in Puglia where he would source wines to sell in the north. When Teresa Manara accompanied her husband on one of his trips south and saw Lecce for the first time, he was as taken with the city as he had been. She loved it so much that she couldn’t resist her desire to relocate there. It was a time when people were heading north in search of work in the big cities. But they decided to move from the north to the south to resettle in Lecce, a city that the march of time had forgotten.
Augusto was just still a kid
Many years later, Augusto Cantele would start our family’s winery Cantine Cantele, together with his father and his brother Domenico in 1979. But first he went to study winemaking in the north in Conegliano and he stayed on in the north to work at wineries in Veneto where he discovered his passion for white wines. In the 1970s, as Italy was once again going through radical changes, Augusto returned to his family in Lecce and began working as a consultant in the villages of Guagnano and Salice Salentino. It wouldn’t be until the 1990s, when he bought his first vineyards, that he would produce the first bottles with the Cantele family name.
Today
Teresa Manara and Giovanni Battista Cantele’s grandchildren are the main character in the story: Augusto’s children, Gianni and Paolo; and Domenico’s children, Umberto and Luisa. They all share one thing in common: A passion and a talent for wine.
Puglia Situated in the heart of the Mediterranean, Puglia is a land of rare beauty, where vast plains alternate with gentle hills. Salento, the long narrow strip that forms Puglia’s southern peninsula, extends between the Ionian and Adriatic seas. It’s an area rich with ancient olive groves and vines, enchanting beaches and jagged rocky shoreline, classic grottos and some of Italy’s best farmland. |