Castellana Grotte is world-famous for its underground world: kilometres of caves, hollowed out by hundreds of millions of years of water on limestone, with immense halls full of stalactites and stalagmites. In the middle of that landscape, on the limestone plateaus of the Murgia Barese between central Puglia and Basilicata, the story of Terrecarsiche has been unfolding since 1939.

The name is no coincidence: "terre carsiche" literally means "karst soils" — a direct reference to the caves to which this region owes its fame. What began as the wine business of the Insalata family grew, via father Andrea — who was the first to decide to bottle their own wine — into the cellar that is run today by his son Nicola.

Terrecarsiche owns no vineyards itself. Instead the cellar works closely with a select group of local winegrowers in the Murgia Barese and the Valle d'Itria, whose vineyards they follow closely so as to bring in only the best grapes. That choice for quality over quantity was rewarded with the Tre Bicchieri of Gambero Rosso — the highest distinction an Italian wine can receive.

What really sets Terrecarsiche apart is the ageing: one of their wines spends months deep inside the Grotte di Castellana themselves, where the constant temperature and humidity of the cave give the wine a unique, slow evolution — an ageing process you will find nowhere else in the world.