Wine Arcana

Grape

Casavecchia

Casavecchia is a red grape associated with the hills around Pontelatone in the province of Caserta, northern Campania. Its revival forms part of a wider effort to bottle local varieties individually, alongside Pallagrello Nero and Pallagrello Bianco.

A recovery story with uncertain beginnings

A frequently repeated account traces the surviving grape to a vine growing by an abandoned house near Pontelatone, explaining the name casa vecchia, “old house.” Alois presents this as a local legend. Its further association with an ancient Roman wine should also be treated as a historical hypothesis, not as an established identification of the modern cultivar.1. Alois, “Casavecchia,” explicitly presenting the ruined-house account as legend and the Roman connection as an attribution.

The contemporary recovery is more concrete. A 2026 account of Vestini Campagnano describes its early commitment to Casavecchia and Pallagrello, with a first harvest in 1998, and lists Casavecchia Riserva among its wines. The grape also has a specific appellation context in Casavecchia di Pontelatone, documented by Regione Campania.

Understanding the wine through maturation

Alois's Trebulanum supplies a detailed example of Casavecchia intended for extended maturation. The producer describes October harvesting in the Monti Trebulani, fermentation with skin contact in large wooden vessels, malolactic fermentation, and two years in wood followed by two in bottle.

Each stage does different work. Maceration extracts colour and tannin from the fruit; malolactic conversion changes the acid balance; the subsequent time in wood and bottle develops the wine after fermentation. A bottle produced this way reflects both the grape and a long series of cellar choices. The schedule belongs to Trebulanum, rather than defining a universal minimum for Casavecchia.

These wines make the revived variety visible as a substantial local red. They also put its cultural significance in perspective: the present story rests on growers propagating, cultivating and selling the grape, regardless of how far back its ancestry can eventually be traced.

Sources