Teresa Manara Chardonnay is one of the wines we feel most deeply connected to. For two reasons—both simple, both profound. It was the first white wine in Puglia to be fermented in oak. And it carries our grandmother’s name.
Even after all this time, seeing a bottle on a table with the words “Teresa Manara” still gives me a feeling I can’t quite explain. Because Teresa was a reserved woman. She didn’t seek the spotlight. She stayed on the sidelines—but from there, you could tell she was the one holding everything together.
I believe she would have appreciated the tribute. Even if she’d probably have responded with a faint smile and a glance that said, “What have you come up with this time?”
Those who drink this wine often know the story. They know it was my father, Augusto, who wanted to make a white wine that was different—at a time when almost no one in Puglia believed it was even possible.
But very few know how it all really began.
In the 1950s, my grandparents moved to Salento. He was from Veneto, she from Romagna. They had met in Imola, where they lived for a while, before deciding—against the tide—to move south. A kind of reverse migration: from the north to a land that, back then, promised little but had so much to give. They brought with them their traditions, their flavors, their solid, hard-working idea of family. The rest, they learned here. While many were leaving in search of opportunity, they made the opposite journey—with no certainties, but with a clear purpose: to build something.
Toward the end of that decade, my father left to study oenology in Conegliano Veneto. He was the first in the family to formally study wine. My uncle Domenico chose a different path—economics. A choice that would prove essential years later, giving structure and future to what would become our family winery. During that period, my father would occasionally come home for Sunday lunch. They were sacred moments, with well-defined roles: my grandmother, true to her Romagnolo roots, made fresh pasta and Bolognese ragù. My grandfather set the table and chose the wine. No one made decisions alone, but everyone knew Teresa had the final say. A quiet form of matriarchy—and it worked.
One day, at lunch, she said: “I’d like a white wine today.” My grandfather, used to choosing between red and rosé, looked at her, puzzled: “Teresa, we’re in Puglia. We make red wine. Maybe rosé.” She didn’t react. She kept stirring the ragù and, without changing tone, replied: “Well then, I’ll ask Augusto. Just one. Just for me.”
That sentence, dropped casually between tagliatelle and silence, lingered. My father didn’t say anything that day—but he held onto it.
It took forty years. And when he finally created the white wine he had always imagined—elegant, deep, with just the right character—he and Uncle Domenico decided on the name: Teresa Manara.
Our grandmother never got to taste it, sadly. But somehow, the wine resembles her. It carries something of her quiet strength. Her understated presence. I’m not sure if it’s a wine of memory or a wine of vision—maybe it’s both. But every time we pour it, it feels like that sentence, spoken in a kitchen half a century ago, is still waiting for an answer.
