Tenimenti Grieco Anima Osca Rosso 2023
£11.75
The wine
Smooth and juicy, with ample notes of wild berried fruit and ripe cherry enveloping a soft texture, bright balancing freshness and a deliciously fruity finish. An easy, generous red from a region worth exploring.
The red Anima Osca blends Montepulciano, the workhorse red of the Adriatic coast, with Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. Montepulciano gives colour and soft, plummy flesh; the international pair add structure and spice. Not to be confused with Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, which is Sangiovese from a Tuscan town.
The producer
Tenimenti Grieco
View all Tenimenti Grieco winesTenimenti Grieco farm in Molise, the second-smallest region in Italy and easily the least known. It sits between Abruzzo and Puglia on the Adriatic, and for most of its history its wine went into other people's blends rather than into bottles of its own.
The estate's purpose is Tintilia. The variety is native to Molise and grown essentially nowhere else, and it very nearly disappeared: plantings collapsed after the war as growers replaced it with higher-yielding varieties, and by the 1990s only scattered old vines remained. Its name probably comes from the Spanish tinto, and it arrived under Bourbon rule. It gives a deeply coloured, spicy red with real acidity, and it only performs above about 200 metres, which is where the estate's vineyards sit.
Alongside it they work Falanghina, Montepulciano and Aglianico under the Biferno appellation, named after the river. Molise remains one of the best-value corners of Italy precisely because so few people can place it on a map.
