Among the golden stones of Apulia and the breeze from the Eastern seas, an ancient secret endures. It is the legend of Bombino Bianco, the white grape of the knights, said to have been brought to Puglia by the Templars returning from the Holy Land.
In a time when crosses marked sails and swords gleamed at sunset, the Knights of the Temple arrived in Brindisi, the sacred port of the Crusades, carrying relics, maps, spices… and, whispered the locals, tiny vine cuttings, wrapped in wax like treasures from afar. They came from Syria, Cyprus, perhaps Antioch — lands where the pale, sun-hardy grapes of the East flourished.
From Brindisi, they traveled inland along the ancient pilgrim routes, settling in Andria and Barletta, where their Commanderies blended prayer and toil. Barletta’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre still recalls their presence, while the mysterious Castel del Monte watches over lands once cultivated by the knights.
It was here, in the red Apulian soil, that the vines thrived. Over time, the foreign grapes adapted, producing clusters full and bright, yielding a wine sunlit as the East, yet rooted as firmly as Apulian stone. Farmers, unaware of its exotic origin, named it Bombino — “little boy” — for the rounded shape of its clusters, as if a tiny figure blessed the vineyard.
Remarkably, the very lands once tended by the Templars — Barletta, Andria, Brindisi, and the hills around Castel del Monte — remain the heart of Bombino Bianco today. The legend, intertwined with the land, lives on in every glass.
Even now, when a glass of Bombino Bianco catches the sunset over the Tavoliere plain, one might imagine:
“In this wine sleeps the soul of the knights.”
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