I Muri, Primitivo

Alcohol percentage: 13.5%

Area:
Puglia is in the heel of Italy, now best known for the red wine of Salice Salentino. It’s a hot and dry area but cooled by sea breezes. The I Muri vineyards are in the province of Taranto, mostly in the communes of Manduria and Sava. The red soils are calcerous clay and rich in iron, minerals and nutrients. 80% of the grapes come from old bush vines and the rest from trained vines that are at least 20 years old.

Grape variety:
Primitivo is now accepted to be the same grape as California’s Zinfandel. Here it was fermented cool and briefly aged in oak barrels before bottling.

Producer:
I Muri is owned by the Farnese group – winemaker is Filippo Baccalaro, a native of Piemonte, who has been working in Puglia for almost two decades.

Maturity potential:
Drink within 5 years of the vintage.

The Bottle Shop rating:
Juicy, modern fruit with a hint of Morello cherry bitterness, allied to some zesty, spicy, herbal complexity that marks it out as classically Italian.