Vineyards in Spring

The Umbrian countryside is at its peak beauty in spring, where you’ll find garlands of flowers and green valleys with a mild climate everywhere. The days lengthen, become sunnier, and the landscapes begin to be tinged with new tones and lights.

Walking among the vineyards is like witnessing an awakening. Just a few light rains and the warmth of the spring sun are enough to make the branches grow centimeters each day.

The rows of vines thicken, and the leaves take on an intense green hue. The sap awakens and begins to flow, bringing vigor to the plant. It oozes from the buds, setting the vine on the path to producing future shoots and ripening its fruits.

Buds begin to sprout along the cordons, small, green, and pink, before turning into leaves.

They lengthen, become branches, and multiply, until among the folds, you can see small, tender pyramids that will become juicy clusters. Life begins again, and nature silently reveals itself, continuing in an incessant and vital cycle that fills us with wonder, marvel, and lessons.

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  Vineyards in Spring24 March 2024
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  Bike and Wine, a winning combination24 March 2024
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  Unusual and secret Assisi beneath our steps23 March 2024

Bike and Wine, a winning combination

In a world where environmental sustainability is assuming an increasingly important role, this combination aims to highlight both cycling tourism and wine tourism, merging them into proposals aimed at promoting the wine heritage and allowing wine and sports enthusiasts to appreciate the beauty of the Umbrian countryside while riding a bike. A pleasure for the body and mind along unique routes that continue to showcase over time an environment of rare sophistication, where human traces coexist happily with the natural surroundings. A completely ‘open-air’ experience that can conclude with a visit to our vineyards and a tasting on a panoramic terrace.

Our winery is guided by a strong ethical approach and deep respect for the environment. We believe that ensuring natural balance is not only entirely possible but also necessary to produce quality wines that respect the land. This vision translates into preserving the ecological diversity of the vineyard ecosystem and its surroundings, respecting the health of the land, animals, and people, and allowing each vineyard to express its natural and full potential.

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  Vineyards in Spring24 March 2024
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  Bike and Wine, a winning combination24 March 2024
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  Unusual and secret Assisi beneath our steps23 March 2024

Unusual and secret Assisi beneath our steps

Ancient cities hidden beneath well-known cities, communal squares covering Roman forums, Etruscan memories emerging from oblivion. All this happens in Umbria. Umbria is not just the great peace of St. Francis or the sublime painting of Giotto. It is a way of life that coexists with history, with masterpieces. Even in everyday rituals. We suggest a journey to discover the places hidden beneath our steps: Roman and underground Assisi. Some places are well-known, others less so, but equally evocative. An itinerary to experience the history of these places firsthand! The starting point for this immersion into the depths of Assisi is Via Portica at number 2, in Piazza del Comune. From here, descending four meters, you can access the underground area that crosses the Romanesque crypt of the former Church of San Nicolò “de platea,” adorned with artifacts such as capitals, sarcophagi, and inscriptions from the Roman era, originating from Assisi or the immediate vicinity. You then continue through a narrow passage along the retaining wall of the Temple of Minerva, from the first century BC, which dominates the space above with its elegant colonnade. Before your eyes, in all its extension, will unfold the Roman Forum, the pulsating heart of Roman Assisi, where political, administrative, and economic affairs concerning the community were conducted and citizens could attend. The itinerary continues to the Roman House or House of Properzio, discovered beneath the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore: here, accompanied by a guide from the Museum System, you can admire the original mosaic floor and, in the covered portico, the beautiful painted decorations, such as the niche (viridarium) painted with delicate green tendrils and small red flowers, upon which various little birds perch (from the first century AD). You then proceed with the visit to the house of Palazzo Giampé, with magnificent mosaics and the bridal chamber. Beneath the Piazza del Comune, dominated by the Temple of Minerva, you can visit the Roman Forum, the ancient imperial agora, once open-air. About two meters underground, along a long corridor, you can distinguish the most important buildings: the courthouse, the temple of the Dioscuri, the temple dedicated to Castor and Pollux, the cistern, and the tabernae.

After this journey through time, we await you for a multisensory immersion that combines history and flavors in a perfect blend: a tasting of our wines accompanied by local specialties.

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  Vineyards in Spring24 March 2024
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  Bike and Wine, a winning combination24 March 2024
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  Unusual and secret Assisi beneath our steps23 March 2024

Truffle, the story of a fascinating and mysterious food

Umbria has always been a land of truffles: the ancient Umbrians called that “fragrant stone” a “tartùfro”. And they introduced its use and knowledge throughout the peninsula. The men who survived the flood, whom the Greeks called “ombrikoi”, already knew the wonderful fruit of the earth.

The Babylonians sought it among the sands of the eastern deserts; Greeks and Romans were great admirers to the point of attributing divine qualities to it. But the oldest authentic historical memory comes from the naturalistic studies of Theophrastus of Eresos (371-287 BC), a disciple of Aristotle, who was responsible for the first classification of fungi. According to Theophrastus, truffles originated from the meeting between autumn rains and thunder. Their particular hypogeal nature led them to be called idnon, hidden, from which the term idnology, the science that studies them, was born. Truffles appear in the republican Rome of Cicero (106-43 BC), who mentions them as “children of the Earth”. Their traces become more evident in the imperial age when they became the undisputed protagonists of the sought-after banquets of Marcus Gavius Apicius (25 BC – 37 AD), whom Seneca called a “gourmet”. Nero spoke of them as the “food of the gods”. At the court of the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, there was also the Greek physician and botanist Dioscorides (ca. 40-90 AD), who dealt with truffles in De Materia Medica, a herbal work that profoundly influenced the history of medicine. But the most accurate scientific analysis of truffles, from the 1st century AD, is undoubtedly that reported in the Naturalis Historia (XIX, 11-13), in which Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) defines them as “earth excrescences”.

It is not cultivated and cannot be reproduced: the charm of the truffle lies in its mystery.

Born from the earth and darkness, it grows near the roots of trees. It is not cultivated and cannot be reproduced. It grows in the darkness of the soil, clinging to life thanks to the roots of trees. To preserve and propagate the species, it has only one weapon: its fragrance. An irresistible lure. Something ancestral that spreads in the soil, surfaces, and captures the sense of smell, an indescribable and inexplicable fragrance, decisive and distinct.

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  Vineyards in Spring24 March 2024
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  Bike and Wine, a winning combination24 March 2024
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  Unusual and secret Assisi beneath our steps23 March 2024

Vineyards in Summer

The Umbria region is a generous bestower of breathtaking landscapes in summer.

Undulating profiles unfold in a silent landscape that is tinged with vibrant colors: from the vivid yellow of sunflower fields to the golden yellow of wheat expanses; from the intense green of the vineyards to the shifting green of the olive groves.

In this season, lush vineyards thicken the ridges with a luminous cloak, within which grape clusters grow to maturity in the secret shadows. Summer is also the season of conviviality par excellence.

Don’t miss the experience of tasting our wines on the terrace at sunset, when the golden light of the sun, with its reflections, envelops the landscape in poetry, while the sky is tinged with pink and red.

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  Vineyards in Spring24 March 2024
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  Bike and Wine, a winning combination24 March 2024
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  Unusual and secret Assisi beneath our steps23 March 2024

Wine tourism yes, but sustainable!

Sustainable wine tourism does not only emphasize organic farming, which we implement across the board, from careful integrated pest management without the use of pesticides and herbicides to short pruning, from tying with traditional loops respecting the ecosystem to spring thinning. Sustainable wine tourism also involves proper waste management, from the use of recycled paper to reduced plastic usage, from reducing CO2 emissions to achieving energy independence. This is our vision of sustainability that favors less technology and more countryside, viewing the vineyard as a biodiversity experience, and the cellar as the place where wine production is simply accompanied. The focus is on us, the main actors of tourism where we do our part, encouraging education and communication about the environment and its protection.

We prioritize environmental sustainability at the center of every business decision; being able to look not only at the next semester or year, but at the next ten years or, as was told in the book “The Good Ancestor”, looking ahead at least seven generations to set today’s goals.

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  Vineyards in Spring24 March 2024
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  Bike and Wine, a winning combination24 March 2024
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  Unusual and secret Assisi beneath our steps23 March 2024

Umbria Through the Senses

Umbria, the green heart of Italy: this is the slogan by which this region is known worldwide.

But to grasp the meaning of a demanding word like ‘heart’, we need to talk about quality of life as a distinctive trait, relying on the five senses, the most direct way for each of us to perceive and capture reality.

Sight: the greenery of Umbria In any direction you look, even in a hurry and even aiming for a destination, green is truly everywhere: in protected parks and cultivated fields, on rolling hills and gentle mountainsides, where undergrowth and tall trees struggle for life against the stone. There’s the silvery green of the many olive trees, the deep green of the oaks around the Carceri hermitage in Assisi, the matte green of the cypresses, the brightness of the grasslands in Castelluccio in spring, and the dense green of cornfields and sunflower plantations. And then there’s the green of the cities, the most surprising of all. A green that not only peeks out from flowerbeds but also bursts between buildings in the historic centers, with embankments turning into gardens with tall trees. With the countryside blending into neighborhoods, in transitions that make each of Umbria’s cities a mosaic of astonishing beauty.

Touch: the materials of art Traveling through Umbria without getting your hands dirty would be a great pity! Because while touching valuable paintings and sculptures is certainly inappropriate, limiting oneself to looking at the materials that make up the cities without ever feeling their effect on the skin would be equally a loss. The marble of a church will never be the same in summer and winter or at different times of the day; the tufa of an Etruscan wall will be crumbly, ever-changing under the fingers; ceramics will be different on the counter in Deruta or Gualdo Tadino, or when exposed to the air at a market alongside terracotta. The wood of beams, doors, and fixtures will tell, inch by inch, from the first seasoning to the wrinkles inflicted by time and weather. Touching the variability firsthand is the best way to realize that a monument, like a city, is a living organism.

Hearing: listening to silence It may be useful to leave behind asphalted paths, but often it’s not even necessary. The place will be recognizable to the naked eye: few or even no houses. And above, the sky: clear or cloudy, dark or starry. And silence will echo in the ears like, as children, the sea of shells. And gradually, the sounds of nature that we’ve lost the habit of listening to will resurface. It may be in a forest, near a river, in an isolated lake made silent by darkness. It may happen among Etruscan or Roman ruins, or along the paths of great mysticism. It may occur in a plowed field in summer, in the hours when the heat dulls the nature’s rustles, or in winter cities when sometimes even snow dampens the rustles. The important thing is not to let this opportunity, not so easy to seize elsewhere, of the magic of silence escape.

Smell: the scents of seasons and the earth Here, in Umbria, the air carries with it the scents of life and work, the aromas of bread, earth, and wine. At the beginning of autumn, it’s the smell of wood that fills the alleys of the historic centers and creates hints that speak of introspection and intimacy. The beautiful season brings intoxicating scents of herbs and lavender, lime trees in bloom, and live and powerful sap already flowing in the plants, awakening them. Another smell can be chased, different from season to season but constant in its presence: the smell of water. That of springs, lakes, waterfalls, fountains, and the many waterways that cross the region. An almost incessant smell of water, a tale of a relationship between man and nature.

Taste: the flavors of regional cuisine Here, the products of the earth speak directly to the heart. And the ancient knowledge of men relives in the same pleasure one feels when welcoming a friend. Among woods, valleys, and plateaus and along the gentle slopes of hills, you can find precious treasures, all to be enjoyed: in Umbria, you can travel along roads that lead you to taste the excellent products of its land. Let yourself be led to discover the ancient flavors that have influenced Umbria’s wine and food culture, such as pork butchery, lentils, saffron, truffles, cheeses, wine, and oil. A small region, a great green heart that at first glance unfolds multiple, precise, and well-connotated identities, a legacy of a history made of fragmentations and vicissitudes. However, there is a common thread that over the centuries has bound the Umbrian territory in an indissoluble bond. It is the widespread spirituality, which from Jacopone da Todi, St. Francis, and St. Clare, reaches years close to us, with the theoretical elaboration of Aldo Capitini culminating in the March of Peace. It is this ideal of peace that makes Umbria a combination of reason and feeling, corporeality, and spirituality that makes it united and unique in the world.

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  Vineyards in Spring24 March 2024
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  Bike and Wine, a winning combination24 March 2024
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  Unusual and secret Assisi beneath our steps23 March 2024

Calendimaggio of Assisi – Welcome back Spring!

Calendimaggio of Assisi 8-9-10-11 maggio 2024

Drums roll with a pounding rhythm. A long procession, preceded by vigorous drummers, descends from Via San Rufino and arrives in the Piazza del Comune: elegant ladies and simple townsfolk parade by in colorful attire, accompanied by youths and children. On the stage set against the Temple of Minerva, singers and musicians with ancient instruments perform, while armigers and standard bearers stand on the sides.

It’s not the set of a historical film, nor the usual medieval reenactment, but the unique festival of Calendimaggio. It’s a grandiose representation of the ancient medieval factions of Parte de Sopra and Parte de Sotto, recalling the long struggles between the Nepis and Fiumi families that bloodied the city between the 14th and 15th centuries. Difficult to describe is this succession of scenes of medieval life, songs and choirs, dances, processions, archery displays, crossbowmen, and flag bearers. Yet it has an authentic charm that engages the people of Assisi, awakening them from winter and leading them day by day to the celebration.

The secular soul of Assisi emerges during Calendimaggio when, with powerful evocative impact, time returns to the Middle Ages, the bonds of daily life dissolve, and the magic begins. Over three days, the city transforms, hosting a multitude of events and performances, the preparation of which requires at least a year of work and the involvement of the entire community: some write the parts, others play music, sing, act, create costumes and scenery, or cook ancient dishes.

Every year, the two factions return to compete in a fiercely sweet competition of singing, acting, and scenic creations. The festival, with its ancient origins, is dedicated to spring. Medieval documents mention the “Songs of May,” compositions of poems and songs performed by groups of young people in the Assisi of Saint Francis. The medieval effect is surprising and real through the clothes, sounds, scents, and dialogues that intertwine.

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  Vineyards in Spring24 March 2024
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  Bike and Wine, a winning combination24 March 2024
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  Unusual and secret Assisi beneath our steps23 March 2024

Sustainability and slowness, an inseparable combination

It’s a true philosophy, a way of life.

Every moment is lived as an experience rich in emotions to be fully savored. By living slowly, time expands, leaving room for encounters with details; the sight of views that we wouldn’t have noticed in haste, the conversation with people who share our same experience, or simply that moment of pure tranquility that nature can provide.

An opportunity to look at reality with new eyes, through a perspective often overlooked, that of the landscape unfolding slowly, allowing us to savor the details and encounters with people of all kinds who convey perspectives that wouldn’t have been caught with faster means. The wine tourist is not in a hurry; they intend to maintain a healthy and balanced relationship between their personal pleasure and their connection with nature. They are the prototype of the sustainable tourist, aware of and following the seasons, wanting to spend more time in the territory they respect. They seek and love local storytelling, willing to understand the culture of the place and the stories of the local actors. They appreciate authentic storytelling. Through wine tourism, the land and everything connected to it are also told, especially if it is in a territory with a strong vocation like Umbria.

Here, at Cantina Tili, we seek to enhance ancient knowledge and flavors, aspire to less hurried but deeper relationships, and propose, starting from our shared past, a different way of building and looking at our future.

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  Vineyards in Spring24 March 2024
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  Bike and Wine, a winning combination24 March 2024
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  Unusual and secret Assisi beneath our steps23 March 2024

Color your journey in Umbria green!

We find ourselves in the countryside surrounding Assisi, in the heart of Umbria: here, in every direction we look, verdant nature unfolds before our eyes, immersed in a magical and serene light that settles at dusk over a thousand undulating profiles, blending into a fairy-tale atmosphere of bell towers and pathways, clear water mirrors, and woods.

Umbria is the place where spirit and labor, man and nature merge in a continuous osmotic relationship based on respect. A respect that becomes hospitality and gives a sense of mutual enrichment to hospitality. These places, which have preserved a character of happy symbiosis between landscape and spiritual ferment, offer the opportunity to challenge one’s own conceptions of time and space to discover a new way of conceiving one’s vision of nature and dialogue with it.

Attention to history and the territory’s vocation permeates the atmosphere in our Winery and finds expression in the constant search for harmony with the surrounding environment. This is where we find ourselves, the place where we live, work, welcome, and share.

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  Vineyards in Spring24 March 2024
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  Bike and Wine, a winning combination24 March 2024
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  Unusual and secret Assisi beneath our steps23 March 2024