TRADITIONAL CAMPANIAN COOKED WINE RECIPE, cooking the must, sweet wine-based beverage, great for desserts and more.

For me, cooked wine always tastes like childhood. I remember it being prepared by my father: the must simmering slowly, the kitchen filled with a sweet, intense aroma, and that sense of tradition passed down from generation to generation.

Certainly, the preparation is lengthy — it takes 10 hours to cook the grape must — but the result is well worth it. You end up with a thick, dark, velvety syrup that is not only tasty… it’s special.

If you think it’s just an ingredient for desserts, you’re mistaken. Homemade cooked wine is truly versatile: it’s used in Campanian Christmas sweets like roccocò, mostaccioli, cassatine, and susamielli; it enriches a ragù or roast, making them even more flavorful; it replaces balsamic vinegar in salads; and grandmothers even used it as a natural cough syrup.
In short, a concentrate of tradition that finds its place in both sweet and savory recipes.

We do not add spices, the choice not to add them is because we mainly use it for preparing ragù, mostly for savory recipes.

Also excellent as a soothing cough remedy, it’s a kind of homemade syrup, used since ancient times by our grandmothers.

Some confuse it with the Sardinian sapa, which indeed is made by the same process: long cooking of grape must until it turns into syrup. The difference? Sapa is mainly used in desserts, while the Campanian cooked wine shines also in savory dishes, from ragù to roasts.
We don’t add spices because we often use it in savory recipes, but many families flavor it with cinnamon or cloves.

The beauty of cooked wine is that it’s not just an ingredient: it’s a memory, a ritual. I immediately associate it with Christmas when it was put in small jars and given away with cookies or typical sweets. A simple, genuine gift full of meaning.

Follow me in the kitchen today for the cooked wine recipe!