It’s often noted that people in southern Italy use more hand gestures than people in the north. On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be a big difference. But most southern Italians do acknowledge their more demonstrative tendencies, usually with joking references to hot blood or humble upbringings. Whatever the reasons, hands really start flying as you go farther and farther south of Rome.
It would take a sociologist to say for sure why this is. Since the “true” Italian language is said to be Florentine Tuscan, it may be that southerners were slower to pick up the speech patterns of unified Italy. Given how Italy has developed in more recent times, with a tremendous amount of migration toward the industrial centers of the north, it’s only natural that the clash of regional dialects necessitated some sign language. Much of it has become universal, although in places like Naples, Palermo, and Bari it’s used with a little more gusto.
The enduring classic is the gesture in which you turn your palm skyward, press your four fingers to your thumb and shake your hand at chest height. This carries a wide range of meanings, from What the hell are you talking about? to Get a load of this guy and Watch it, pal. It’s usually accompanied by an amused, sarcastic, or disgusted purse of the lips, depending on usage.
Then there’s the one where you press your hands together as if you were praying, then shake them up and down, usually with a roll of the eyes (or other exasperated facial expression). This is the Why don’t you listen to me? or You’re going to be the death of me gesture, a favorite among Italian mothers.
Another classic, though lesser-known, is what might be called the esatto (exactly), a dramatic flourish used to say You are exactly right or This is perfect. It is done by making a sideways okay sign with thumb and index finger (so the o faces up), then drawing your hand across your chest in a fluid motion. Some people use a vertical motion instead, going from neck to waist as if they were unzipping an invisible jacket.
But this is only the beginning. As we learn firsthand during a visit to the Taurino winery in Guagnano, Puglia, the sign language of southern Italy merits its own illustrated dictionary.
Pino, a longtime vineyard worker at Taurino, is the man who introduces us not only to the Taurino estate but to the nuances of the unspoken word. Dressed in standard Puglian vineyard worker attire—cut-offs, mesh tank top, Dr. Scholl’s–style wood-soled sandals—he leads us on a tour of some giant, bush-trained vines near the town of Salice Salentino. He describes the soils and methods of pruning and, every so often, he pulls down on the lower lid of his right eye with his index finger. He says that the thick-trunked alberelli in this particular vineyard are older than he is, and he does the thing with his eye again. He explains how many acres Taurino owns, and then the eye thing. How many varieties of grapes they have … eye thing.
This is the Y’understand? gesture. In some instances, it can also mean Stai attento! (“Beware!”), when the accompanying facial expression is suitably ominous. But Pino is using the Y’understand? version, which is ironic since his gravelly voice and dialect-flavored speech prevent us from understanding much of what he’s saying. We nod yes anyway.
Continuing on to a small patch of big-berried table grapes, Pino does a sort of reverse karate-chop on himself, tapping his waist with the inside of his flattened hand (I’m hungry). He ducks under the trellis and returns with two large bunches of zibibbo grapes, widening his eyes and pushing an index finger into his cheek (These are good). As we munch on the grapes and walk along through the vineyard, we ask him about Cosimo Taurino, the widely admired proprietor of the estate, who passed away in 1999. Pino’s eyes soften and he puts his hand to his heart for a moment, then he draws his thumb across his cheek and offers a knowing nod. This is the symbol for furbo (“sly, cunning”), which, based on his expression, Pino must mean in a good way. Apparently Taurino was a sharp businessman.
In the course of a half-hour tour, Pino covers what seems like the entire manual lexicon, as well as some subtle, semiverbal communication: When he doesn’t know the answer to something he blurts out a quick boh, an inflection used in place of Non lo so (“I don’t know”) all over Italy. When he knows something very well, or is in enthusiastic agreement with something someone has said, he replies with a rousing woooop! (“But of course!”). To review: boh, with an expulsion of air, for when you have no idea; woooop, with an intake of air, for when you know very well the person, place, or thing being discussed.
When it’s time to leave, we tell Pino he’s the most interesting vineyard man we’ve ever met. He laughs, looks skyward, and does the two-handed, pray-and-shake gesture, introducing a new variation: the Ma dai! (“Come on!”). We tell him we’re not kidding and go on our way, feeling that little bit more Italian after the encounter. As we drive through some of the low-slung, sun-scorched villages of the Salentine peninsula, every group of old men playing cards in the shade, every gaggle of teenagers hanging out on their motorini, becomes a subject of study. The hands are really flying—or at least it seems that way.
Although both Calabria and Sicily reach closer to the equator, Puglia looks and feels most like the extreme south. This is probably because it is the flattest region in Italy, a fertile plain rivaled only by the Po Valley of Emilia-Romagna for productivity. Puglia is agriculture writ large: the biggest olive trees you’ll ever see, the biggest wheat fields, the biggest vineyards, all of them rooted in iron-rich soils. The region is the principal source of the three Italian staples: bread, olive oil, and wine.
As in Venice, or the hills of Tuscany, Puglia seems to have its own type of light. Where Tuscany’s is golden and diffuse, Puglia’s is fiery and bright, whether it’s bouncing off the rust-colored earth or gleaming in whitewashed hilltop villages. Summery towns such as Martina Franca and Gallipoli give Puglia the look of some outsize Greek isle, although the local culture is informed not just by the Greeks but by all of the historic occupants of the south: Lombards, Normans, Bourbons, and many others. Standing in sharp contrast to some of the boxy, bleached-out, Greek-looking villages are more ornate towns such as Martina Franca, Manduria, and Lecce, whose baroque palaces and churches evoke Rome and points even farther north.
Puglia has long run neck-and-neck with Sicily and the Veneto for the title of Italy’s most prodigious wine producer. While in recent years Veneto has claimed the top spot, it is Puglia that seems most dominated by the co-op winery culture. Drive from Taranto to Lecce one late-August morning and you’ll see huge industrial wineries with long lines of cars, trucks, and tractors out front. All of them are piled high with fresh-picked grapes and surrounded by men chatting and smoking cigarettes, waiting for their hauls to be weighed. As in Sicily, only a small percentage of Puglia’s huge wine production is bottled and/or classified as DOC, leaving the rest to be shipped out as high-alcohol blending wine or concentrated grape must. But, as in Sicily, Puglia is in the midst of a gold rush, as more private investment—and hence wine in bottles, not tanker trucks—changes the face of the region.
As European Union and Italian-government subsidies for co-op wineries have largely dried up, the managers of these massive facilities, and their member grape-growers, face stark choices: change, sell, or go out of business. Co-ops have had to scale back production and focus more on branded, bottled wines, while many grape growers have been content to either plant other crops or rip up their vines (and collect subsidies from the EU for doing so). Other growers are finding eager buyers for their properties, since the EU is not allowing any new planting of vineyards in Italy but, rather, allows only established vineyard estates to augment their plantings. So large Italian or foreign wine firms looking to make an investment in Puglia (of which there are many) can’t just buy a wheat field and convert it to vines. The race is not so much for land but for vineyard land, which is typically replanted by the new owner.
“In both Sicily and Puglia, people are buying licenses to plant vineyards from firms that have them but for whatever reason have decided not to use them,” says Renzo Cotarella, the general manager and chief winemaker for Tuscany’s Antinori estate. Antinori recently took a big position in Puglia, purchasing two large vineyard properties and building a new winery in Minervino Murge, in the Castel del Monte DOC zone. Known as Vigneti del Sud, Antinori’s Puglia operation markets wines under the Tormaresca brand name, sourcing grapes from a 250-acre vineyard in Minervino and another even larger holding in San Pietro Vernotico, not far from the coastal port of Brindisi. In addition to local grapes such as aglianico and negroamaro, the Vigneti del Sud farms (both of which grew grapes for local co-ops in the past) are being extensively planted with the likes of chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon.
“This area is ripe for development,” says Cotarella, remarking on the relative ease and low cost of making wine in Puglia. “At this point in time [summer 2000], vineyards in the Brindisi province are selling for fifteen million lire per hectare”—about three thousand dollars an acre. “In Grosseto, in southern Tuscany, it’s twice as much. And in Bolgheri, in western Tuscany, it’s ten times as much. We can make red wines of great quality down here in Puglia, and at a very competitive price.” In the 1999 vintage, Antinori produced more than four hundred thousand bottles of Tormaresca. Their plan, of course, is to make millions.
“In Puglia, you have the advantage of working on a large scale. And unlike in Sicily, there’s readily available water in Puglia,” Cotarella continues. “Also, because Puglia is considered a depressed area, you get help from the EC to develop quality-oriented vineyards here, which helps you defray some of your costs.” Ah, Italy … there’s always an angle.
Some growers in Puglia have stepped outside of the co-op structure altogether and established relationships with market-savvy bottlers, such as Sicily’s Calatrasi (which markets the Terrale line of wines) or partnerships, such as the one between American winemaker Mark Shannon and importer Neil Empson, whose A-Mano and Promessa wines have become bargain-priced sensations in the United States. Shannon and Empson essentially lease space in one of Puglia’s large co-op wineries and buy grapes as they need them, creating high-quality, low-priced wines with very little in the way of overhead.
It could be argued that Puglia is evolving from a mass producer of bulk wine into a mass producer of cheap bottled wine: a subtle distinction, to be sure. Although there are a number of properties in the region producing good wines (most of them longer-established estates such as Taurino and Rivera), Puglia hasn’t yet lived up to its billing as “the California of Italy”—a moniker also attached, with more justification, to Sicily, which up to this point has capitalized more thoroughly on its incredible winemaking potential. Right now, Puglia is a great region to scour for everyday values, particularly deep, savory, well-priced reds from the local negroamaro or primitivo grapes. The truly great stuff remains a little more elusive, but the potential is undoubtedly there.
“The soils in particular are excellent here,” says Cotarella, describing Puglia’s rather consistent mixture of terra rossa (ferrous red clay and sand) and limestone. “It’s the same kind of soil you see in places like Coonawarra in Australia. The minerals in the soils give the wine power, but the limestone underneath allows for good drainage to maintain acidity. You don’t see that in a lot of flat regions; usually they are heavier soils. Here there’s an excellent balance.”
Puglia has an awful lot of DOC zones for a region with such a paltry production of classified wine. This is especially true of white wine from Puglia, which is produced in abundance yet doesn’t add up to much. A lot of it goes to vermouth blenders, while most of the wine that falls under DOC parameters remains firmly rooted in its home market.
The two largest white-wine DOCs in Puglia are Locorotondo and Martina Franca, which exemplify the myriad deficiencies of the DOC system in general and Puglia’s in particular. Locorotondo and Martina Franca are neighboring communes near the Adriatic coast between Bari and Brindisi, part of a rolling plain famous for the conical-shaped stone dwellings known as trulli. The Locorotondo and Martina Franca DOC wines come from essentially identical soils, and are made from the same grapes—a blend based on the green, flinty verdeca, a local variety—yet they are treated as separate zones. On top of that, their wines are nearly impossible to find in bottles outside of the trulli district, save for those of the giant cooperative Cantina del Locorotondo. The two zones make nine hundred thousand gallons of wine a year. Where does it all go? We couldn’t say, but somehow it all qualifies as DOC.
The other DOC whites of Puglia are similarly scarce, although for a more logical reason: They’re produced in tiny quantities. Gravina, an inland DOC that hugs the Basilicata border, has been noted by wine writers as a solid white, but it is a rarity: Based on a random assortment of local and not-so-local grapes (malvasia, greco di tufo, bombino bianco, trebbiano toscano, and verdeca, among others), its production is largely confined to a large cooperative in Botromagno.
As DOC whites go, probably the most interesting wines are coming out of the Castel del Monte and Salice Salentino zones, whose disciplines allow for substantial amounts of chardonnay (there are also varietal whites from sauvignon, pinot bianco, and bombino bianco made in Castel del Monte). Chardonnay is on the rise on the southerly Salentine peninsula in particular, where it is found not only in Salice Salentino but in the Galatina Bianco DOC and a number of IGT- or VdT-designated bottlings. The chardonnays or chardonnay-based blends of Taurino, Pervini, Leone de Castris, and Francesco Candido are all good wines, but as of yet none of them will make you forget California. Like the other white wines of Puglia, they seem like afterthoughts in a region more naturally predisposed to big, jammy reds.
Despite hundreds of miles of coastline and a cuisine rich in seafood—including a range of fragrant brodetti (fish soups) to rival anything from Greece or France—Puglia has a surprising dearth of good white wine to go with it. Luckily, there are a range of colorful, spicy rosés to sip alongside the local answer to bouillabaisse, and rarely does a food-and-wine combination work so well: The deep flavors of a rosé are well-suited to the assertive tastes of fish and shellfish. And when it comes to rosati, Puglia does not disappoint.
Some winemakers say that the rosato tradition of southern Italy—there are many excellent pink wines made in Abruzzo, Calabria, and Sicily as well—dates back to an era before fermentation temperatures could be controlled by refrigeration. Traditionally, making a full-fledged red wine, with an appropriate time to macerate on its skins, was difficult because the intense heat of the south induced “stuck” fermentations, in which yeasts stopped working as the temperature of the fermenting wine rose. In essence, the pink wine we know today may be the descendant of a half-made red from centuries ago.
These days, Puglian rosati are made either by macerating red grapes for a very short time before starting the fermentation, or by blending red and white musts together. The spicy negroamaro grape of the Salentine peninsula, most famous in Salice Salentino reds, makes an excellent rosato base, as does primitivo, whose dense color gives rosés an exceptional concentration.
One of the legendary rosato wines of Italy is the “Five Roses” brand from the Leone de Castris winery, a tangy negroamaro-based rosé that first debuted in 1923 and is still considered one of the best wines of its type in Italy. Other well-known rosati include the “Rosa del Golfo” of Damiano Calò in Alezio, and the “Mjère” rosato from his neighbor, Michele Calò (no relation), in Tuglie. Both wines, based on negroamaro, combine crisp cherry-fruit flavors with a dash of cinnamon and orange-peel spice, striking a balance between refreshment and depth of flavor. These and a number of other worthy rosés are the unsung wines of the Italian south, obscured by their bigger red brethren and often passed over by American importers, who think the U.S. market is still hung over from white zinfandel. Too bad.
The red-wine scene in Puglia is less complicated than it may look from the number of DOC zones strewn across the region. For all of the seeming diversity of Puglian wine, there are three main red grapes to remember: uva di troia, an unusually aromatic and deeply colorful red from the northern reaches; negroamaro, the most widely planted red in the region and the king of the Salento peninsula; and primitivo, which, after researchers at the University of California, Davis confirmed its genetic link to American red zinfandel, is one of the new Italian stars in American restaurants.
Uva di troia, so named for a small town west of Foggia where it is thought to have originated, is the least known of the trio. It factors into a handful of DOC reds, the best known of which are the Castel del Monte wines of Rivera in Andria. Rivera is one of the more historic properties in Puglia, and it was one of the first of the region’s wineries to have a significant presence in the United States, especially with its “Il Falcone” Castel del Monte Riserva. Along with the nearby Torrevento and Santa Lucia estates, and now the new Antinori property, Rivera is the anchor of Castel del Monte, whose best wines hint at something more than sappy southern red. There are some who believe uva di troia is the most interesting red grape in Puglia, but even the Castel del Monte DOC doesn’t always showcase it on its own: The wines can contain aglianico and montepulciano as well.
More firmly entrenched in Puglia is negroamaro, whose name means “black and bitter” and whose wines often follow suit—but in a good, licorice-like way. Probably the best-known negroamaro-based wines are the reds of the late Cosimo Taurino, whose 300-acre estate in Guagnano was for decades the only Puglian winery most Americans had ever heard of. Founded in 1972 and now run by Taurino’s survivors—wife Rita, son Francesco, and daughter Rosanna—the winery is still the benchmark in Pugliese wine. Taurino garners wide praise not only for its earthy, perfumed Salice Salentinos but also for the negroamaro-based “Notarpanaro” blend, and “Patriglione,” a red that incorporates some late-harvested negroamaro to give it a glycerine richness à la Amarone.
Negroamaro, as its name implies, is thick-skinned and deeply colored, giving it a somewhat tough, tannic personality that is softened and brightened by the addition of the more aromatic malvasia nera, the common partner to negroamaro in the DOC blends of the Salentine peninsula. In fact, as further evidence of Puglia’s willy-nilly DOC structure, there are a whopping eleven classified reds that incorporate the negroamaro-malvasia nera combination: Alezio, Brindisi, Copertino, Galatina, Leverano, Lizzano, Matina, Nardò, Salice Salentino, and Squinzano. The majority of these zones are clustered next to one another near Lecce, and for the most part their wines—in those cases where commercial production actually exists—are difficult to tell apart. At a minimum, this overlap makes it easier for you as a consumer to know what you’re getting: If you pick up a red wine from any of the above-named DOCs, you can be reasonably assured that it contains at least 50 percent negroamaro, along with a splash of malvasia nera.
A number of other well-known producers work along the same lines as Taurino, producing basic DOC wines such as Salice Salentino and augmenting those with VdT or IGT wines with nomi di fantasia (fantasy names). Francesco Candido’s “Cappello di Prete” (negroamaro-malvasia nera) and “Duca d’Aragona” (negroamaro-montepulciano) bottlings complement his solid Salices, while Agricole Vallone, which makes both Salice Salentino and Brindisi Rosso reds, has attracted a lot of attention with its “Graticciaia,” a deep red made from partially dried grapes. Michele Calò of the Alezio DOC complements his range with a single-vineyard, negroamaro-based blend called “Vigna Spano,” another plump, savory Puglian red.
While negroamaro is considered the most structured, ageworthy red in Puglia, primitivo has emerged as the most consumer-friendly. Rich, soft, oak-aged primitivos have found an enthusiastic audience in the United States, at least in part because of their competitive prices. Aside from the intrigue of its relation to American zinfandel, primitivo has many of the characteristics American wine drinkers crave: sweet, soft tannins; plush, even syrupy fruit; and high alcohol. As expressed in DOCs such as Primitivo di Manduria (as well as in non-DOC bottlings), primitivo can be more than just a simple quaffing red, although for now that is its primary role.
The most significant primitivo producer of the moment is a company called Accademia dei Racemi, a consortium of five farm estates and two wineries in and around Manduria. Run by the brothers Gregorio and Fabrizio Perrucci, the company is centered around a large cooperative winery in Manduria called Pervini, owned by their father, and a winery the brothers built right next to Pervini, in which they vinify wines from their member estates. Under the Accademia dei Racemi umbrella are the wines of Felline, the Perruccis’ vineyard in Manduria; Masseria Pepe, a small farm in Maruggio; Castel di Salve, a British-owned estate in Tricase, south of Lecce; and Sinfarossa, another small estate near Taranto. The Perrucci brothers oversee production at all four Accademia wineries and help market the Pervini wines, making them the big name in Pugliese primitivo.
“Thirty years ago, everyone in this region made their own wine,” says Gregorio Perrucci. “My father started out as a broker for small family wineries, but once the co-ops got going in the sixties and seventies, that culture disappeared. What we’re trying to do with Accademia is rediscover the individuality of Pugliese farms, but in a more financially viable context.”
Primitivo, Perrucci notes, is an early-maturing variety, and has thinner skins and sweeter tannins than its counterpart in the Salentino, negroamaro. But it is richer in natural sugars and flavor compounds. “This is a grape that makes powerful wines,” Perrucci says, “but they are very accessible when they are young.”
The knock on primitivo is that it can be low in acid and excessively alcoholic, without the firm structure and dense concentration that characterizes the best negroamaro (and uva di troia, for that matter). Perrucci says that aging in small oak barrels definitely helps to rectify that, as does greater care in the vineyard. “We have this incredible resource here that very few regions have,” he says, referring to the miles upon miles of old alberelli vines of primitivo throughout the Salentino, which recall the days of the ancient Greeks. Although the crosswinds of the Adriatic and Ionian seas help cool the vineyards of the Salento at night, it is still a scorchingly hot region; the tight, dense canopies of foliage offered by alberelli-trained vines help protect the grapes from overripening, so that they maintain a better balance of acidity and sugar.
As Perrucci explains, “With these old vines we can produce concentrated fruit, with good structure, but we have to guard against it becoming overripe. That’s the biggest problem with Puglian reds: Most are cooked.”
In the primitivos of Felline, A-Mano, and Sinfarossa, among others, the juicy core of black, spicy fruit is held in place by a frame of new oak. The modern sheen of these wines has given the region a much-needed face-lift. And they are the perfect reds to drink with rustic Puglian dishes such as orecchiette (ear-shaped pasta) with crumbled sausage and broccoli rabe, or the pizza rustica found in nearby Abruzzo that incorporates onions, capers, tomatoes, and anchovies. With the success these wines have had on the international market, it’s likely that there will be more prospectors poking around in Puglia in the years to come.
Unlike Sicily, to which it is so often compared, Puglia has no mass of sweet wines from which to choose. But there are a few notables. Thanks to continued dry weather through the fall and the aforementioned crosscurrents of the Adriatic and Ionian seas, the Salentine peninsula in particular is well suited to the appassimento (drying) of both red and white grapes. So along with some of the Amarone-style dry wines being marketed by Vallone and Pervini (Pervini’s is named “Primo Amore”), there are provisions in the Primitivo di Manduria DOC for sweet and fortified versions of the wine. Some of these are made using the appassimento process, others by simply leaving grapes to hang and shrivel on the vines. Salice Salentino, too, can be made in sweet versions, and it’s not a bad choice to pair with dry cheese such as aged ricotta, which is popular in Puglia.
Other sweet wines of Puglia include the rare Moscato di Trani DOC, made from moscato bianco, and the rarer red Aleatico di Puglia, a wine whose DOC covers the entire region but is all but lost to the world. Only about a dozen acres of vineyards are still registered under the DOC, and no wine was made in 1997. Think of it as one less thing to remember.
PROVINCES: Bari (BA), Brindisi (BR), Foggia (FG), Lecce (LE), Taranto (TA)
CAPITAL: Bari
KEY WINE TOWNS: Lecce, Locorotondo, Manduria, Martina Franca, Salice Salentino
TOTAL VINEYARD AREA*: 84,959 hectares, or 209,933 acres. Rank: 2nd
TOTAL WINE PRODUCTION*: 7,782,000 hectoliters, or 205,600,440 gallons (2nd); 40% white; 60% red
DOC WINE PRODUCED*: 4.5% (18th)
SPECIALTY FOODS: orecchiette pasta; breads, often flavored; fennel; aged ricotta cheese; broccoli; cauliflower; eggplant; chickory; cime di rapa (broccoli rabe).
*2000 figures. Rankings out of twenty regions total (Trentino–Alto Adige counted as one). Source: Istituto Statistica Mercati Agro-Alimentari (ISMEA), Rome.
BOMBINO BIANCO: Soft, light grape found in some measure in eight Puglian DOC wines, most notably Castel del Monte Bianco and Gravina.
VERDECA: Tart, vegetal, high-acid white, thought to be native to region. Widely planted in Puglia and used as a base in bulk wines and in the hyperproductive Martina Franca and Locorotondo DOCs.
CHARDONNAY: Widely planted international variety found in four Puglian DOCs, including the bianco of Salice Salentino.
OTHERS: TREBBIANO TOSCANO, used in a variety of blends, MALVASIA BIANCA (used in several blends).
NEGROAMARO: The most-planted red in Puglia, and the sixth-most planted red in Italy. Dark, thick-skinned, tannic, it is the base for eleven DOC reds, most in the southerly Salentine peninsula.
PRIMITIVO: Genetically linked to American zinfandel, an early-ripening, softly structured red used in varietal wines and blends.
MALVASIA NERA: Dark version of malvasia bianco. Combined with negroamaro in Salento DOC red blends such as Salice Salentino and Brindisi Rosso. There are two distinct clones, one from Brindisi and one from Lecce.
UVA DI TROIA: Native grape of northern Puglia, near Foggia. Thought to have been brought by the ancient Greeks from Troy (Troia). Aromatic and interesting, but on the wane. Used most notably in Castel del Monte reds.
OTHERS: MONTEPULCIANO, used in numerous DOC blends; SANGIOVESE, also used in numerous DOC blends; ALEATICO, rare red for sweet wines.
Given its history as a producer of bulk wines, Puglia has not traditionally been a place in which vintages have been tracked very carefully. Besides, Puglia is blessed with one of the more consistent climates in Italy, lending it a California-like resistance to the whims of vintage. Yes, hail can be a threat in the Salento, but generally speaking, Puglia can rely, year in and year out, on hot, dry weather. And in general, Puglia does not produce any mass of wines that are capable of (or will benefit from) long aging. Puglian reds can be consumed young. Stick with recent vintages and don’t worry too much about variance.
Most people know Puglia as a jumping-off point for Greece from the Adriatic port of Brindisi, but little more. Generally speaking, Puglia is not as well equipped for tourism as, say, Tuscany, and there are very few wineries with facilities to receive visitors. Yet the towns of Martina Franca and especially Lecce, both on the Salentine peninsula, are true gems for anyone who enjoys architecture—the city is full of beautifully preserved baroque buildings—and good food and wine. Lecce is probably the most strategically oriented town in terms of seeing vineyards. Another town well worth a visit is the village of Gallipoli, on the Ionian coast.
A-Mano Primitivo, $
Sinfarossa Primitivo di Manduria “Zinfandel,” $
Felline Primitivo di Manduria, $
Here are three expressions of primitivo, each a little deeper and richer than the last, all very juicy and accessible as young wines. Scents of licorice, black and red raspberries, and black pepper are on display in these wines, a push-pull of savory and sweet. On balance, they are easy-drinking wines with medium acidity and soft tannins, great for spicy pasta dishes that incorporate sausage or peperoncini; tannins and acidity tend to accentuate spice.
Tormaresca Negroamaro “Masseria Maime,” $$
Michele Calò Alezio Rosso “Mjère,” $
Taurino “Notarpanaro,” $
A little darker, a little firmer, a little tarrier, and a little more perfumed than its neighbor primitivo, negroamaro is also a little more crisply acidic and earthy. More of a rustic red than the slick primitivo, negroamaro is a wine that can stand up to a few years’ aging. You’ll note more dark tones of coffee and tobacco in these wines, particularly the Notarpanaro, a classic Puglian red and one of the best-known southern-Italian reds in the market.
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